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BOOKS BY 
EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS 

The Nero Humanism 
A Book of Meditations 

Each $1.50 net ; postage 10 cents. To be obtained 
from booksellers or from the publisher 

B. W. HUEBSCH, 150 Nassau St., New York 



A BOOK of 


MRDITATIOKS 


By 


EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS 


Author of 
The New Humanism 




N E TT YORK 


igo2 


B. W. HUEBSCH 









THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
T«>o CowEe Rec«^d 

NOV. '^ 1902 

CLASS f^ XXa Ne. 

/A w~ i^ ^^ ^r ; 

COPY B. 



Copyright, ig02 
by 

SPWARD HOWARP GRIGGS 



printed ^ B. w. huebscm 

NEW YORK 



Time Sweeps On 

[Florence, December 3, 1898] 

THE pink color fades from the light fleeces 
of cloud, the twilight descends over the 
city, in the street the crier calls the evening 
papers, the throng hastens homeward in the 
dusk : 

Men work or rest, but Time sweeps on! 

The glory of Italy crumbles from the walls 
where fading frescoes decay, it broods over old 
churches and palaces like the fading light over 
the darkening city, it is buried in the countless 
pictures in which it descends from the past : 

The sun shines and is silent, but Time sweeps on! 

The Greek is a splendid memory, the Egyptian 
and Assyrian a dim legend, the palaces of 
Nineveh are fallen, the splendors of Alexandria 
are sunk beneath the mud of the Nile. The 
Jew prays beside the weeping wall that sorrow- 
fully whispers the past of Solomon, Babylon is 
lost in the mist, and Tyre and Carthage are but 
the vibrant echoes of a forgotten dream : 

Nations rise and fall, but Time sweeps on! 

Where the Britons, clothed in skins, met under 
some ancient oak, there vast and gloomy cities 
vomit their poisonous breath. Where Alexan- 
der led his adventurous soldiers or Cleopatra 



TIME SWEEPS ON 



met the legions of Rome, there English and Ger- 
man traders barter the machine-woven stuffs of 
to-day. Where cities stood the sand whirls in 
wild triumph, and the gardens in which lovers 
sang echo to some night beast of prey. The 
golden palace of Theodoric is shrunk to the 
fragment of a wall. The tomb of an emperor is 
the play-house of the mob. Causes for which 
men fought and died are forgotten, and the 
fighters, too, are locked in the vast embrace : 

Men live and die, hut Time sweeps on! 

The figures carved upon the graves of the 
Crusaders are worn smooth by innumerable 
feet. The walls of Venetian palaces which 
echoed to the laughter of gorgeous women are 
Hpped by the silent kisses of the dead canals. 
The Forum where Cato and Cicero walked is 
sunk below the level of the street and littered 
with the stone waste of what once were temples : 

Men hate and love, hut Time szvceps on! 

On, on, relentlessly, unhurried by our passion- 
ate desires, unchecked by our wild regret, 
remorselessly, unheedingly. Time sweeps on. 
Carrying us with it in its merciless and exultant 
flood, or leaving us stranded like foam-bubbles 
upon the shore ; sweeping vast civilizations into 
arrogant being, and surging over their last dying 
traces : 

Time ever sweeps on, and on, and on! 



THE SPIRIT 



[Paris, December 29, 1898] 

SUBTLE are the rhythms and harmonies of 
the spirit. The call of a bird at twilight, 
the shimmer of light through the forest leaves, 
the glow that echoes the sun in the evening sky, 
the pearls of dew on the morning grass — why do 
these waken such memories and make musical 
such secret chords of the heart ? The rhythms of 
the spirit are past comprehension, yet life's 
sweetness and pain are woven of their invisible 
harmonies. 



X 



THE MYSTERY 



[Rome, December 15, 1S98] 

MYSTERY upon mystery ! Out of the dark 
the child wakens, with strange wonder in 
his eyes. His play is the echo of life, and he 
hastens from it to the love and work of the day. 
The youth reaches back into the dim human ^. 
past, out into the abyss of nature, above into the 
blue mystery of the heavens. In the full light 
of day the man struggles. The hunger for 
bread, the thirst for fame, the desire to care for 
those he loves, press upon him. Like the plough 
across the field he is driven into the narrow 
furrow of life. The forest invites him and the 
heaven shines upon him. He has crossed the 
field and enters the cool shade of the wood. The 
brooks murmur of miracles and the birds twitter 
the mysteries of the forest. He passes down the 
hill-side and comes to the changeless river. He 
crosses it into the night beyond. Mystery upon 
mystery ! Retreating ever before us, clothing 
itself with darkness or veiling itself with light ; 
hinted in the shimmer of olive-leaves and the 
cooing of countless doves ; behind the wide eyes 
of children and the shut lips of pain ; brooding 
just beyond the tragic destiny, and echoing back 
from the smile of joy ! Mystery upon mystery! 



OPPORTUNITY 



i 



[Chautauqua, August 14, 1900] 

WHY can one not realize constantly that 
to-day is the opportunity for sublime 
living. Consecrate some fragment of time every 
day to the quiet effort to see things in relation : 
do not depend upon the mere accident of dis- 
tance to give truth. 



THE TWO FORCES 



[Paris, October 25, 1898] 

THE gravitation toward God, the moral 
ideal, is the centripetal motion of the 
spirit. Unbalanced by another force it tends to 
the annulment of self, to absorption in the All 
in the mood of a Hindoo pantheism. The ever- 
lasting affirmation of personality is the centri- 
fugal force of the spirit. Unbalanced by its 
opposite, this leads to selfishness and egoism. 
The two together produce that perfect circular 
motion which is ever active yet ever in harmony, 
which forever moves toward God, yet forever 
affirms the independent self. 



10 



WISDOM 



[Rome, December 16, 1898] 

HOW miserably life may deteriorate when it 
is lived habitually in narrow and mean 
things. It is not a question of poverty or wealth, 
though grinding poverty makes it more difficult 
to live constantly in great interests. But with 
a very slight command of money one may center 
one's life in the supreme reaUties. Personal love 
with its deep below deep of revelation may be 
ours if we do not degrade it by unworthiness or 
a cheap familiarity. The miracle of beauty which 
nature plays over daily before us may be ours, 
from the first glory of the dawn to the Venetian 
pageant of the sunset, and on to the sublime 
shining of the stars of night. The thought of all 
the seers and poets may speak to us. 

And with this world of greatness yearning to 
unfold itself to us we can spend our energies in 
petty irritation, in spying upon the sHght failures 
of others, in seeking to secure the best physical 
comforts for ourselves ! 

There must be a certain noble prodigality in 
great living. Some things are of such absolute 
value that one must spend time, money, life for 
them without thought or hesitation. If the 
virtue of common sense is a thrifty prudence 
in little things, the at least equally important un- 
common sense consists in knowing the absolute 
when it comes and accepting it at its worth, 

II 



NOTRE DAME DE PARIS 



[Paris, October 26, 1898] 

THE evening falls and the gray October sky 
makes everything sombre, even the 
autumn leaves that fall from the trees behnia 
Notre Dame. The great church seems peculiarly 
impressive ; the stone is softened and darkened, 
and an air of mystery is given to the forest of 
statues and carvings that adorn it. Between the 
doors is a grave and majestic figure of Christ, 
while arching above are the forms of a hundred 
angels and the representation of the judgment- 
day. High above, the columns and their carved 
adornments are as dainty as lace-work, while 
still higher are the gray and grotesque forms of 
beast and demon, born of the mediaeval imag- 
ination. They look down over Paris with un- 
changing leer as if filled with sardonic mirth at 
the tragic irony of the human life that flows by 
as it has flowed for centuries. The great rose- 
window and the massive towers add a sombre 
dignity to the impression of it all. One walks 
around the church, and other rose-windows and 
countless statues — a myriad of forms, grave, 
noble, grotesque, poured out with a rich and yet 
sombre abandon of imagination — overpower 
one. The circular chapel juts out behind, while 
above, the flying buttresses add a fresh maze of 
graceful forms. Under the falling autumn leaves 
lie huge figures removed from the church; be- 

12 



NOTRE DAME DE PARIS 



hind, among the trees children play half-silently. 
The mist comes as the gray twilight falls. The 
Cathedral gathers itself together, vast, unap- 
proachable, its myriad forms resolved in one 
great sombre unity, lifted away from the modern 
world. 



13 



LIFE 

[July I, 1901] 

LIFE is always difficult in proportion to its 
intensity and reality. In the formulas of 
the philosophers the problem seems clear and 
easy, but when we turn to actual living the 
theory often proves barren and inapplicable. 

Life is made of a few simple elements : as 
the physical existence depends upon fresh air, 
sunshine, simple food, and exercise, so the 
deeper life is made of love, work, hunger for 
ideals, appreciation of beauty, desire to know 
the truth. Yet as no two leaves upon a tree 
are the same, so each life is a new equation of 
old and simple forces. It is this that gives the 
perennial freshness and interest to life. It is 
this that makes the problem of living one to be 
solved only in practise, while all that our philos- 
ophy can accomplish Is to present the universal 
principles out of which life is made. 



14 



THE LAST PROVING 



IS IT not always true that when the purifica- 
tion of the spirit has been wrought through 
struggle and pain one more supreme test is apt 
to come? When Shelley's Prometheus chained 
upon the mountain of suffering has learned the 
lesson of three thousand years of pain and can 
forgive the power that tortures him, then it is 
the furies are loosed for one last struggle to 
dominate his soul. If he endures that and rises 
above it, then the power that chained him is 
conquered and the freedom of his spirit must 
become an external liberty. It is often so ; and 
the sadness of the last proving should only give 
us a sure faith in the light that must soon dawn. 



IS 



TRISTAN UND ISOLDE 



[Munich, September 5, 1901] 

NO WORK of Wagner's has ever made 
upon me the impression Tristan und 
Isolde produced last night. I felt in it far more 
dramatic harmony than in Lohengrin, Tann- 
hauser or Die Meistersinger. Is this, however, 
not due precisely to the fact that there is so 
little dramatic action in this opera? In it the 
interest centers in the musical interpretation of 
certain powerful states of feeling. There is just 
enough dramatic action to furnish a basis and 
reason for these emotional states. Does not 
this mean that Wagner was mistaken in suppos- 
ing that the center of interest in his operas was 
the dramatic action ? Is not the center with him 
as completely as in the Italian operas in the 
music, the difference being that Wagner devel- 
oped a different kind of musical harmony? In 
the Italian operas various pretty pieces of music 
are strung together on the thread of some 
romantic story ; in Wagner there is far higher 
dramatic unity in the music, since it develops 
consistently and organically in the interpreta- 
tion of consecutive emotional states. 

If I am right in this, the conception of " the 
music of the future " must be completely 
revised. The music drama must be pruned of 
dramatic elements which cannot receive natural 
interpretation in music. Action must be more 

16 



" THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE " 

completely subordinated than in many of Wag- 
ner's works ; the center of interest must be the 
emotional states accompanying action and expe- 
rience, which find their natural and supreme 
revelation only in music. When these changes 
come we may hope that the opera will no longer 
ofifend us with the painful lack of dramatic re- 
ality which even in Wagner is so often present. 
Without in the least going back to the older 
phase of opera, music will be restored to its 
central place in the combined art, and the real 
fruit of Wagner's revolution will be harvested. 



17 



FLORENCE 



[Fiesole, December 2, 1898. From the piazza below 
the monastery] 

THE valley of the Arno sweeps away to the 
north and east, while across it fold after 
fold of blue mountains lifts away to the light 
fleeces of cloud in the sky above. In the heart 
of the valley lies Florence, its domes and spires 
darkened by the afternoon shadows. Here and 
there lazily rising smoke is filled with light by 
the low afternoon sun. Brunelleschi's dome and 
Giotto's tower stand out strongly in the center ; 
while on the lower hill-tops and in the nearer 
valleys is the silver beauty of countless olive 
trees gleaming exquisitely in the sunshine like 
the shimmer of a myriad doves in flight. Be- 
hind, the wind sighs in the pine-trees of the 
monastery yard, while afar the shining Arno 
smiles up at the sun. 



18 



FLORENCE 



[Florence, November-December. 1898J 

A TRULY great man is strong in many 
directions, and periods when life has 
blossomed out in some unusual way are prolific 
of such men. The great Florentines of the Renais- 
sance all have this many-sided quality. To-day 
an artist who attempted painting, sculpture and 
architecture would be regarded as a superficial 
trifler: yet Giotto could plan a campanile that 
outrivals any other structure of the Renais- 
sance, carve bas-reliefs in marble upon it, and 
yet work so continuously and successfully in 
painting that we think of him particularly in that 
sphere. So Michael Angelo could paint the ceil- 
ing of the Sistine Chapel, make marble waken to 
deep-breathing forms, erect fortifications to 
defend his city, lift into air the dome of St. 
Peter's and write sonnets worthy of Dante. 
While of all the men of the period Leonardo is 
the culminating example of this myriad-minded- 
ness. 

The greatness of these men was not an exag- 
gerated and over-cultivated talent, but an essen- 
tial greatness of spirit ; a fundamental, creative 
force that showed itself readily in any channel to 
which they turned their energies. They repre- 
sent human nature raised to a higher power of 
expression. Our system of specialization is 
measured upon the abilities of small and unin- 

19 



GENIUS 

spired men. Fortunately a world-genius will 
break through all hmitations ; but if our edu- 
cational system is to serve the highest life we 
must seek to awaken the creative spirit from 
within, instead of fashioning a narrow talent or 
multiplying an unrelated erudition. 

WHAT of the fate of the second-class 
artists, those who just missed being 
great? Were they conscious of it, and did they 
mourn over incomplete achievements? Or did 
they regard themselves as superior and hold any 
derogatory judgment to be a lack of deserved 
appreciation? Generally the latter, I think. 
For usually the outlook of ambition is measured 
by the vision-point of power: usually, but not 
always, for besides the tragedy of great power 
unfulfilled is the rarer tragedy of a great ambi- 
tion without ability to follow it even to a partial 
measure of success. Men of talent usually 
regard themselves as men of genius and are 
unconscious of the lower value of their work ; 
men of genius are conscious of their exaltation 
only in rare moments of great achieving and 
may be filled at intervals with the bitterest doubt 
of their own power ; while often they are 
unaware of the excellence of their greatest 
works and see only the inadequacy of the result 
to the inspiration. 

20 



THE UFFIZI GALLERY 



Perhaps it is well that it is so, for it makes 
life and satisfaction possible to less gifted men. 
But is not the fundamental quality of genius the 
vastness of the outlook and the unapproachable 
greatness of the ideal ; and would not any man 
be touched with some spark of the heavenly fire 
if he were awakened even to a glimpse of the 
exalted vision? The impossible ideal and the 
" divine discontent " it brings, with a limitless 
power of work : these make genius, these are 
genius. 

THE Ufifizi gallery is a bewildering multitude 
of significant and beautiful forms, from 
the calm marbles of the ancient world to the 
vibrant pictures of the Renaissance. The old 
Christs and Madonnas of the twelfth century, 
unlovely, untrue m drawing, with impossible 
conventionalized forms and postures are the 
basis from which and against which Renais- 
sance art sprang into being. Works of religious 
symbolism rather than of art, these old pictures 
are arbitrary rather than natural symbols of 
great ideas. One Christ I remember especially: 
the dark figure hanging awkwardly on the cross, 
the face strangely distorted in the painter's 
unskillful effort to express agony : it takes one 
back into the gloom and earnestness of the dark 
centuries. 

21 



THE OPPOSING MOTIVES 



Curiously enough, in the arrangement of the 
long corridor, these Byzantine paintings come 
between antique statues — busts of Roman 
emperors, rich, full Venuses, figures instinct with 
natural life and draped in flowing garments. It 
is the contrast of the two worlds, Christian and 
pagan, consecrated and abandoned, spiritual 
and sensuous, from the conflict and union of 
which sprang the Renaissance. 

And how fundamental is the conflict and 
union of these opposing forces in the human 
spirit ! In some rare balanced soul — a Sopho- 
cles, a Leonardo, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a 
Browning — they may be so fused together that 
all sense of struggle is lost and the diiTerent 
elements are merged in the unity of the unfold- 
ing life. But in men generally one or the other 
element dominates, or the two struggle to- 
gether, giving us a St. Antony or a Fra Lippo 
Lippi, a Savonarola or a Lorenzo de' Medici. 
In one man, now one now the other force dom- 
inates, tearing him with successive exorcisms 
as each attempts to expel the other. 

As with men, so with periods, it is rare to find 
the balanced harmony. It appears a little in 
some phases of Greek life and in the innocence 
of the dawning Renaissance ; but in a little time 
the balance is destroyed, one element is exag- 



22 



FRA ANGELICO 



gerated over the other, and the endless battle 
has begun again. 

AFTER Venice the work of Fra Angelico 
stands out with marvelous spirituaHty. In 
contrast to the gorgeous coloring of the Vene- 
tians, the magnificent sensuous women of Titian 
and Tintoretto, the arrogant pageant of rich life 
of Veronese, how simple, delicate and exalted 
are the thin, grave, suffering and compassionate 
Christs, the slender, spiritual virgins, the deli- 
cate color and unreal forms of Angelico. There 
is more spirituality in the one half-length figure 
of Christ rising from the tomb, painted over one 
of the doorways in the cloister of San Marco, 
than in all the paintings of Venice. 

The absence of background in Fra Angelico's 
work is significant. His utter absorption in the 
religious meaning of his painting, his sense that 
every picture was a new consecration of himself 
to the service of the spiritual life in those about 
him, made him concentrate his entire attention 
on the figures and faces that expressed his re- 
ligious conceptions, and avoid all distracting 
accessories. Thus the utter simpHcity of Fra 
Angelico comes more from the spiritual exal- 
tation of his aim than from the place he occu- 
pies chronologically in the development of art. 
The usual environment of his figures is some 

23 



GHIRLANDAJO 



simple cloister arcade or vaulted cell, such as 
those of San Marco. Occasionally he paints 
simple almost archaic rocks and once a delicate 
background of trees where the oerspective of 
the landscape is remarkable, 

GHIRLANDAJO'S extensive frescoes irri- 
tate me as always. There is such a sense 
of self-satisfaction in his work, an absence of all 
perception of his failure — the complacent ego- 
tism of mediocrity — which makes his work 
opposite in impression to that of Andrea del 
Sarto. Up to a certain point the technique is 
admirable. The figures are well-drawn, the 
composition is excellently planned, a realistic 
individuality shows in the treatment of each face 
and form, the whole effect is very decorative, 
" but all the play, the insight and the stretch " — 
out of him ! and out of him precisely because he 
was unconscious of the lack. Had he hungered 
for a higher genius his " reach " would have 
exceeded his *' grasp ", and his work then would 
have had the suggestiveness of Andrea del Sarto 
or the unfulfilled promise of Botticelli. As it is 
he insults us with the arrogant finality of medi- 
ocrity, the unanswerable logic of the man who 
despises the dreamers. But genius breaks 
through the completed circle and astonishes us 
with the unexpected. As the highest point of 

24 



MICHAEL ANGELO 



morality is the heroic imprudence that annuls 
the ordinary logic of Hfe, so the loftiest achieve- 
ments of genius can never be anticipated on the 
plane of common reasoning. An inspired action 
differs not in degree but in kind from the most 
refined calculations of prudence, and so does a 
work of genius from the carefully planned 
effects of the most skillful artisan. 

THE statues for the Medicean tombs show 
what I felt so deeply in the ceiling of the 
Sistine Chapel — Michael Angelo's power to 
work to a vast and unified plan. His soul was 
filled with gigantic conceptions of life, not as cold 
intellectual theories, but warm with emotion and 
instinct with imagination. As is the case with 
all great art, it is a mistake to attempt too close 
an allegorical interpretation of these symbolic 
figures. Those who would find a complete 
political philosophy in them are at fault. The 
very value of a concrete embodiment of the spirit 
lies in the fact that it can express what no 
abstract theory can give. Yet over these six 
statues, two seated and four recumbent, express- 
ing the alternating moods of sleep and waking, 
thought and action, repose and power, broods 
the vast m.ystery of life, the mystery of the eter- 
nal conflict of sin and joy, power and failure, 
life and death, that dominates the spirit of man. 

25 



MICHAEL ANGELO 



To Michael Angelo life is never a serene har- 
mony, but a ceaseless struggle of gigantic and 
opposing forces ; and however extravagant his 
representation of force and power in human 
forms, this but increases the tension with which 
the convergence of opposing tendencies upon 
man's spirit must be met. 

Michael Angelo's life was to some extent a 
tragedy of unfulfilled power even as Andrea del 
Sarto's. But in the case of Andrea the limitation 
was subjective, in the other it was objective. In 
Andrea it was a paralysis of the spirit, for 
Angelo a collapse of external conditions that 
broke off the fulfillment of the life. The parts 
of Michael Angelo's work that we have are ade- 
quate, they are perfect fragments of an uncom- 
pleted plan ; but each work of Andrea's is a 
subtle suggestion of something higher than 
itself, unattained. The tragedy of Michael 
Angelo is like the gloomy exile of Dante — the 
spectacle of a great and mighty spirit struggling 
with misappreciation and untoward conditions. 
The fate of Andrea del Sarto lies in the gray 
depression of the spirit itself that eats the heart 
out of every effort. 

Leonardo was a much more harmonious spirit 
than Angelo, and for him the opposing forces of 
the spirit were reconciled in one unity of life. 
He was sensible of the mystery of life, but to 

25 



LEONARDO DA VINCI 



him it was not the eternal struggle of vast 
forces, but the subtle marvel suggested behind 
every form. Where Angelo struggled to 
embody the endless conflict of great forces, 
Leonardo sought to unify these in the subtle 
mystery of the smile upon his faces, in the 
strange charm of his Hghted backgrounds, in 
the masterly dramatic unity and intensity of his 
Last Supper. The mystery is as great in the 
one case as in the other ; but with the one it is 
the dualistic battle, in the other the informing 
spirit ; in the one the tragic conflict, in the other 
the inexplicable solution of this in the fact of 
life; in the one it is mediaeval, in the other 
modern. 

ANDREA DEL SARTO'S Last Supper is 
no less wonderful than I remembered it. 
One enters the long room, and a startHng 
impression is made by the beautiful and har- 
monious colors of the great picture which covers 
the wall at the opposite end. The effect of 
exquisitely molded color grows the more one 
studies the painting; but that is not its only 
greatness. Andrea has chosen the same dra- 
matic moment that Leonardo portrays, when 
Christ speaks the terrible words " One of you 
shall betray me ; " and the apostles in horror 
exclaim " Is it I ? " But where with Leonardo 

27 



ANDREA'S LAST SUPPER 



all Is objective and dramatic here the inter- 
pretation is entirely subjective. Each apostle 
except John seems to be asking himself the 
question " Could I do it? " One folds his hands 
and looks dreamily away as if he were praying 
that the cup might pass from him. The weakest 
of all the faces is the Christ face, while the 
masterpiece is the Judas, who sits upon Christ's 
right hand. It is the one possible Judas I have 
seen in a painting. The usual conception of 
Judas is the hardened criminal Leonardo paints. 
Such a Judas might have betrayed his master, 
but would he have been in the circle of the 
twelve, and afterward would he have gone 
out and hanged himself in an agony of remorse ? 
But this Judas leans forward on the balls of his 
feet ; one hand is pressed against his breast as 
if he were gasping for breath, the other is 
stretched out with that appealing gesture we use 
when we ask a question to which we know there 
is no answer unless a terrible one. The figure 
is lean and worn, the face, under the tangled 
mass of hair, dark and haggard and beseeching, 
is the face of one who through love might be led 
on and on until he reached a point where any 
action or no action would injure some one, and 
thus be swept over the brink of a terrible crime ; 
and then in an agony of bitter and unavailing 
remorse go out and take his own wretched life. 

28 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 



Leonardo's picture impresses by its mascu- 
line majesty, its affirmative command of each 
type of character and of the dramatic meaning 
of the whole. Andrea del Sarto's appeals to us 
through its feminine delicacy, its expression of 
sensitiveness. In the one the fate is the fate of 
objective actions, in the other it is the fate of 
feelings. The one is modern in its objective 
naturalism, the other is modern in its revelation 
of the inner personal life. 



29 



MICHAEL ANGELO 



[Florence, June, 1901] 

HERE is something deeply depressing if 
one remains for a time alone in the pres- 
ence of these creations of Michael Angelo's 
upon the Medicean tombs. The sombre moods 
of Angelo weigh increasingly upon the spirit. 
Did the man ever smile ? Did the world ever 
seem to him beautiful and life endurable? Cer- 
tainly, if so, he has not embodied the gla'cl mood 
in art. Everywhere, in the dying Adonis, the 
smiting scenes of the Sistine Chapel, the grave 
and gloomy Holy Family of the Uffizi, the 
sombre brooding of these recumbent figures, it 
is the dark weight of the mystery of life that 
Michael Angelo embodies. He is indeed the 
prophet of the afternoon and the sunset in whom 
is expressed all the terror and something of the 
sense of relief of the coming night. 

THE Dawn is the most wonderful of the 
recumbent figures. Warm and ruggedly 
voluptuous in beauty, she seems filled with the 
agony of the life to which she awakens. Dark 
and grave are the moods of Michael Angelo. His 
statues never take you into their confidence, but 
rebuke you and make you feel your insignifi- 
cance. 

The exquisite finish of this statue contrasts 
with the rough-hewn masculine figure of the 

30 



ANGELO'S LAST WORK 



Twilight which seems sinking back into the still 
sleep of the marble from which it has been half- 
called. The sinister figure of Lorenzo broods 
above. Moods sombre and terrible, it is these 
rather than clear thoughts that Michael Angelo 
expresses. 

THE Pieta behind the altar in the Cathedral 
of Florence reveals the last sad phase of 
Michael Angelo's long life. One feels that the 
hand driving the chisel trembled with age. The 
figures seem half-wakened from the stone as if 
the master's conception were too faint and dim 
to be made clearly alive. The limp body of 
Christ rests over against the sorrowing mother, 
the solemn face of Joseph looks from above, 
while Mary Magdalen, cold and grave, supports 
the body from one side. The grouping is har- 
monious, the execution still masterly, and the 
mood is the dark, sad mood of age and death 
with a suggestion of the sigh of relief from the 
burden of life. 

How Michael Angelo's work stands out alone 
in contrast to other Florentine sculptors ! Vast, 
titanic, gloomy, earnest, never gentle, tender, or 
delicately appealing, he is to be reverenced and 
admired rather than loved, to be regarded with 
awe rather than afifection. 

It was the late hour of the afternoon as I 

31 



ANGELO'S LAST WORK 



looked at this group to-day. The shadows 
darkened the vast Cathedral, the priests and 
boys chanted the service, while the great dome 
broke the sounds until the whole air seemed 
vibrant with music, and the entire impression 
was a fitting background for this half-uttered 
dream of the prophet of the evening. 

THIS work of Angelo's grows upon me. 
How different from the early Pieta, the 
master's first great achievement. There it is the 
Madonna upon whom the attention centers, and 
Angelo has given her the grave majesty and 
superb strength of a Greek goddess who has 
suffered and become human. Here the Christ 
is the center ; he is made larger and more power- 
ful, while the Madonna is more human and less 
mighty. Inexpressibly beautiful is the Christ 
face as it leans against the mother's. Not the 
divine Christ this, but the " man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief," solemn, sad as the end- 
less pain of life. 

WHAT a mass of poor work must be done 
that a few great achievements may come 
into being! How few the masters are! If this 
is depressing at least it should prevent one's 
despairing of one's own age. 

On the other hand, when the masterpiece does 

32 



THE MASTERPIECE 



appear it comes so simply and directly, with no 
flourish and noise, as if it were the most natural 
thing in the world — as indeed it is. It comes, 
moreover, as a way of life for the master. Men 
of talent live to paint, write, carve statues ; men 
of genius paint, write, carve to live. 



33 



La Vita Nuova 

A VITA NUOVA twice was Dante's part— 
Once when the wonder filled his youthful 
eyes 
Of that fair smile which woke for aye his heart, 
And after guided him through Paradise. 

Again a new life was his heritage 
When Beatrice passed beyond his sight. 
And fickle Florence, in her sudden rage, 
Made him an exile in the homeless night. 

A bitter new life was his gloomy fate 
Who, heavy-hearted, toiled up alien stairs, 
Hungering with a soul insatiate. 
Lonely, and crying " Peace ! " in fruitless 
prayers. 

The later new life found a vaster form 
Than this sweet love-song of his dreaming 

youth ; 
He faced the pain of death, the changeless storm 
That reaps the fruit of sin in spite of ruth. 

He climbed with aching feet the mount where 

guile 
Dissolves in fire that burns the dross away. 
He journeyed on to meet again the smile 
That gave to Paradise a brighter day. 



LA VITA NUOVA 



And on from flight to flight and star to star, 
He heard the mighty music of the blest, 
And found Hght deepen Hght, till from afar, 
God lifted him to action that is rest. 

And in that beatific sight he found 
The peace that in the world he sought in vain- 
Peace from beholding as a perfect round 
The warring elements of joy and pain. 

And so within his heart and mind arose 
The new life conquering the storms of Time, 
And Dante built a world out of his woes 
With art unequalled singing the sublime. 



35 



THE ALPS 

[Brunnen, Switzerland, June 28, 1901] 

HOW great a change ! From Florence with 
its world of old pictures, its frowning pal- 
aces and noble churches, its noisy stone streets 
and glaring summer sun, to this majestic sweep 
of mountains piled behind mountains, here slop- 
ing gently and clad with meadows and orchards, 
there sheer and precipitous, and beyond rising in 
forests of pine, while behind all rise snow-cov- 
ered peaks radiant in the sunshine. In the midst 
the marvelous, still beauty of Lake Lucerne, and 
all about the breath of the earth and the flowers 
and the twitter of birds. 



36 



THE V/AY OUT OF PARADISE 

[June i6, 1900] 

WHAT is the source of the tendency to 
grow careless in courtesy — real heart 
courtesy towards those one loves the most. Is 
it a peculiarly subtle form of selfishness? One 
will strive hard to give positive happiness to 
another and then spoil it all by carelessly giving 
way to a mood of sullenness or irritation. Is it 
not the worst selfishness to be so absorbed in 
details of one's own comfort as to hurt others ? 
Only by ceaseless watchfulness can one prevent 
the growth of such habits. 



27 



Evening on Calton Hill, Edinburgh 

CURTAINS soft of vapor enfold the city, 
High on fastness grass-covered, glooms 
the castle. 
Glows the western firth like a golden ocean, 
Everywhere silence. 

Dimly outlined mountains appear afar off, 
Faint like dreams that half are forgot and silent. 
Peace and Night enfold all the sleeping city, 
Silent and sleeping. 



38 



The Boulevard St. Germain 

THE little old lady sits on the bench by the 
Boulevard St. Germain. Her hair is as 
white as the snowy bonnet that covers it ; a plain 
red shawl is about the bent shoulders. She sits 
very quiet, not seeing much of the bustle of life 
in the street. It is Sunday afternoon, and the 
endless stream of men and women keeps pass- 
ing ; the tram-cars are crowded ; and carriages 
rich and poor are rolling by. The little old lady 
sits and thinks ; she is very tired and it is good 
to rest. She would like to keep on sitting 
quietly here, thinking and resting. She thinks 
with a sigh that is half longing, half relief, of the 
time when she hurried by on the arm of some 
one to the garden concert or the fete. She 
thinks about a grave that has been a very long 
time in the churchyard of a village, she remem- 
bers how long it is since the flowers withered 
that she was able to place there last. A dog 
runs along and stops, begging. A beautiful 
smile lights up the withered face of the little old 
lady, and it seems much younger as she speaks 
to the dog. The smile subsides and the face 
becomes grave again. The little old lady sits 
quite still, softly thinking. She is very tired, and 
she wants to rest, 

39 



FRANCE 

[Paris, October 20, 1898] 

THE right balance of different elements of 
the spirit is difficult to attain. Thus con- 
tent and form are seldom found in perfect 
harmony ; one or the other element is deficient 
and art fails to be at once meaningful and beau- 
tiful. In all expressions of French genius to-day 
one is impressed with the exquisite beauty, grace 
and skill, but with the frequent lack of signifi- 
cant meaning. One need not turn to painting, 
sculpture or the higher literature for an illustra- 
tion ; the leading articles in the newspapers 
constantly deepen the feeling. The writer aims 
not to state certain facts or truths, or to con- 
vince by a reasonable argument based upon 
facts, but merely to write what is readable and 
interesting. He does it with exquisite skill but 
the general disregard for truth makes the result 
profoundly immoral. The process tends to de- 
bauch the national mind, and is it not a cause as 
well as an expression of the diseased moral and 
intellectual attitude which France has recently 
displayed? 



40 



Alone 

HOW solitary and desolate the path of life 
stretches away across the trackless 
desert. How ceaselessly glares the burning sun. 
How the sand scalds the face, chokes the breath, 
and burns the eyes till there are no tears left to 
weep. Ah, this cruel thirst ! Is every vision of 
cool shade and crystal water only the ceaselessly 
mocking mirage of all human hopes ? Am I to 
fail miserably like all those foolish ones who 
dared pass beyond the shores where fat slaves 
eat the bread of comfort in Lethean ease — ■ 
where despair and failure never enter because 
the vain deluding shadow of impossible hope has 
never come? Are my bones to whiten in the 
ceaselessly glaring sun? Is the pitiless sand at 
last to cover them and leave again the unbroken 
and trackless waste ? 



41 



EXPERIENCE 

[Augrast 31, 1902] 

EVERY experience, however bitter, has its 
lesson, and to focus one's attention on the 
lesson helps one over the bitterness. It is folly 
to waste strength in feeling hurt over misunder- 
standing and unjust criticism. Let one go 
quietly on toward what is real and in the end 
what one is piust show. The only answer to un- 
just criticism is earnest work, the only right re- 
sponse to praise and appreciation is earnest 
work. 



42 



STRASSBURG CATHEDRAL 



[Strassburg, July 27, 1901] 

I AM not disappointed in the Strassburg 
Cathedral: on the contrary it has steadily 
grown upon me. The first impression with the 
unfinished tower and the Romanesque central 
portion is disappointing; but one becomes 
quickly adjusted to these elements and the 
majesty of the whole with the bewildering mul- 
titude of forms impresses one more and more. 

The west front does not fall short of its 
reputed grandeur. Probably there is no better 
example of Gothic art at its highest, when the 
wondrous wealth of decorative forms is em- 
ployed without the offensive excess of over- 
adornment that comes later on. Hardly less, 
however, does the older, simpler portion of the 
church, still Romanesque in character, appeal to 
me. Particularly within, the towering majesty 
of the simple round columns of the transept is 
quite as beautiful as the wealth of columns clus- 
tered together in the vast pillars of the nave. 

The interior of the church gives one nothing 
of the feeling of incompleteness expressed by 
the exterior. The general impression is pecul- 
iarly harmonious with the forest of columnated 
pillars, the beautiful windows with stained glass 
and perfect tracery, the glimpse of the simple 
transept and the broad expanses of the nave and 
aisles. 

43 



THE GOTHIC 



One finds ever some new detail of beauty in 
Gothic architecture. A Greek work grows on 
one through the increasing impression of har- 
mony and beauty in the whole, a Gothic creation 
on the contrary through the discovery of ever 
new forms of beauty in the bewildering and at 
first almost benumbing variety of adorning 
details. 

One can appreciate what a revelation this 
Cathedral was to Goethe ; one finds it more 
difficult to understand his strong reaction 
against the Gothic later on. Yet that too is 
partly clear when one realizes the mutually ex- 
clusive character of the two types of art — Greek 
and Gothic. It Is almost as if the beauty of the 
one were the failure of the other. 



44 



To Goethe 

[Translated from the German dedication prefixed by Bayard 
Taylor to his version of Faust] 

I 

SPIRIT sublime, to spirit-land retiring! 
Where, light-encircled, ever thou did'st 
dwell, 
Far higher now the tasks which thou'rt desiring, 
Thou singest with a nobler, fuller swell. 
From each endeavor toward which thou'rt 

aspiring, 
From freest ether where thou breathest well, 
O kindly bend thee, gracious answer bringing 
To this the latest echo of thy singing! 

II 

The long-dust-covered crowns of the old Muses 
'Neath thy skilled hand with brightest splendor 

shined. 
The age-old secret its strange darkness loses 
Through younger faith and clearer-seeing mind. 
Thou had'st the world-wide sympathy which 

chooses 
Where'er men are the Fatherland to find. 
With wonder deep thy pupils see that never 
The age can die — in thee expressed forever. 

45 



TO GOETHE 



III 

What thou hast sung, all human pains and 

pleasures, 
Life's endless contradictions fresh combiaed ; 
Sweeping the thousand-toned harp with 

measures. 
As once it rang to Shakespeare, Homer blind. 
Dare I into strange tones bear o'er these 

treasures. 
Since all who ventured ere me fell behind? 
O may thy spirit through my accents ringing 
Sound out the deathless message of thy singing ! 



SESENHEIM 



[Sesenheim, Friederikensruhe, July 27, 1901] 

ANEW sense has come to me of Goethe's 
selfishness and of the pathos of Friederike's 
Hfe. I had always felt that Friederike should 
have been glad she was blessed by even a 
moment of Goethe's love — and I believe she 
was glad. But here the impression of the little 
village with its narrow life has made me feel her 
suffering. Living here in the small round of 
activities, with quite unusual capacities for ten- 
derness and love, Strassburg the great city, and 
the simple interests of the village life absorbing 
her attention — he came! Days of joy, months 
of longing, and — he bade her farewell ! Poor 
little girl ! wakened only to be denied and for- 
gotten, while the great man went on, loving 
other ladies, and doing his life-work in the 
larger world. Poor Httle girl! left to be god- 
mother to village children, to fulfill the petty 
tasks of a minister's household and care for the 
sick in the neighborhood. And the years have 
passed and she is gone, and Goethe is gone, and 
the house is gone, and we sit here on the spot 
where they so often sat hand in hand. The even- 
ing twilight darkens, through the young trees is 
a glimpse of deep red sky. Save for the voice of 
a peasant and the sound of a distant hammer 
all is still. Through the little summer-house and 
the trees the distant blue of the mountains is 



47 



SESENHEIM 



discernible. Other days and other times, but 
love and work and heart-break and heart- 
hunger — still these are human life. 

How far away you seem, poor little Fried- 
erike, laughing girl of a hundred and thirty sum- 
mers ago ! How glad the time seemed to you, 
and how painful that visit to Strassburg when 
you felt his disappointment, and he did not come 
back the same ! The clouds still gleam in the 
sunset, a faint twitter of a bird is heard, but your 
heart is silent. All things end — even pain ; but 
the unanswered years of heart-hunger? — 1 

WE ARE back in the little inn. A group of 
country fellows is shouting and singing 
at a table near us. A little lad is playing about 
the floor. The rain falls softly without. Just a 
few feet away is the little church, now used by 
both Catholics and Protestants, and the spot 
where Friederike lived. 

One can understand the idyllic feeling Goethe 
experienced as he ran away from his student 
work in Strassburg and came to this village in 
the midst of its calm forest. It all seems so near, 
and yet so far, so far away. The mystery, ah, 
the mystery of human life ! We are born, we 
play and dream, we love, we work and suffer, 
and we are gone ! What and Whither and Why? 



48 



SESENHEIM 



Only the echoes of our cry reverberate in 
answer. 

All the evening I have been thinking of our 
visit to Assisi. Why? Is it because St. Fran- 
cis, too, fell short of the highest human realiza- 
tion in his love ? How different are St. Francis 
and Goethe, and yet the same pathos of human 
love is in both stories. 



49 



To a Star-Flower 

DEAR little star-flower abloom at my feet, 
What are you waiting for, what is it, 
Sweet ? 
Is the ceaseless glare of the sun a pain? 
Do you long for a sip of the cool, moist rain? 

There are star-flowers, Dear, in the human 

world, — 
Children with angel wings half furled, 
Who find like you that the sun shines strong, 
Who at times like you for the soft rain long. 

There are children. Sweet, of an older age. 
Who have watched life's miracle stage by stage, 
To whom the day seems blank and bare. 
And the night and the rain-drops sweet and fair. 

For the road of pain outstretches long, 
The end must come to the sweetest song, 
And the only check to the tears we weep 
Is the thought that night will come — and sleep ! 



50 



VENICE 

[Venice, November, 1898] 

VENICE is as mysterious and unique as she 
seemed before : at once oriental and 
barbaric in the splendor of her decoration, the 
strangeness of her natural situation makes her 
seem a city of dreams. The effect was deepened 
by the stillness, almost terrible, of the dark 
canals as we glided through them in the late 
evening. The ruined palaces, their gorgeous 
fronts crumbling, their steps lapped by the cold 
green water, seemed a mirage from some 
strange day-dream. 

THE people seem quite as much a ruin sur- 
viving from the past as do the palaces of 
Venice. Wide and dark eyes pathetically or 
wonderingly open on life seem to ask in a dumb, 
unconscious way why it is — the misery or the 
mystery of it all. They dwell amidst the ruined 
magnificence of Venice, unconscious of it yet 
overshadowed by it, so that their lives do not 
seem quite fully human. There is no impression 
of present creative vitality among them, and 
their lives instead of being strongly centered on 
the present and constructive for the future seem 
focused upon the past. 

Meanwhile, the sun gilds the domes and cam- 
panili with the same golden splendor as of old, 
the blue Adriatic smiles back in rivalry at the 

51 



A VENICE FESTIVAL 



sky, the moonlight sheds its transfiguring bene- 
diction over the ruined palaces and the long 
arcades, and the pulse of nature beats forever 
creative, unexhausted. 

IT IS the festival of Santa Maria della Salute ; 
and all day long the dense throng of people 
has glided over the temporary bridge to the 
great church and back again to the countless 
alleys of the city. Along the way numerous 
candle-sellers cry the prices of their wares to be 
used as votive offerings to Mary. In the church 
the crowded mass of people is like a great heart, 
to and from which pulsate the veins and arteries 
of worshipers coming and going: sick women 
who have dragged themselves here in the hope 
of a cure ; trembling forms of old people seeking 
to prolong the pathetic shadow of life that is 
theirs ; dark-eyed girls hungering for life ; chil- 
dren pushed hither and thither in the throng. 
At the door continuous quarreling, half good- 
natured, between those crowding in and out. In 
the church the lips of all moving in prayer and 
the heads bowing, like a wind-swept field of 
wheat, as some altar bell rings. At the main 
altar a brilliant mass of lighted candles, continu- 
ally increased by the offerings of those who have 
struggled up to the altar steps. Suddenly an 
avenue is made in the center of the throng, 

52 



THE PATHOS OF VENICE 



and a long procession of priests, with banners, 
incense, gorgeous robes, enters and moves 
toward the altar : a strange group of men, in 
many the hard look of narrow selfishness or the 
marks of gluttony ; rarely an intelligent face, 
almost never an inspired one. In the midst a 
group chants a service as the line moves on. 

Begun to celebrate the release of the city from 
a frightful pestilence, this church and its festival 
are a strange memorial of the past. Pathetic — 
infinitely so — this blind trust in ritual, this 
immense devotion to an institution consoHng 
but hardly lifting life to-day. Singularly true 
also to the spirit of Venice — Hfe to-day domin- 
ated by the relics and shadows of the past. 

THE charm of Venice is mingled with a 
peculiar sadness: the strange mystic sad- 
ness that is awakened by a falHng gust of 
autumn leaves under a gray sky or by a sombre 
but beautiful sunset ; the sadness of long silent 
arcades through which innumerable feet have 
passed that walk no more ; the sadness of a still 
hous3 filled with sweet and tender associations 
that can never return. As one wanders through 
the narrow lanes, or glides upon the still canals, 
or paces to and fro in the great square with the 
strange splendor of San Marco and the long 
arcades about one, Venice plays upon one's 

53 



VENETIAN PAINTERS 



heart like appealing music full of tender and sad 
longings, echoing the plaintive memories of 
splendid days and nights of star-lit joy. 

THE painters of Venice were singularly true 
to the spirit of her life. Rarely have I seen 
a true religious inspiration, nowhere a profound 
intellectual or moral content in their work. But 
all, even artists of the second class, paint an 
imposing variety of splendid forms in action and 
stately pageants of life. Paul Veronese is in 
some respects the most characteristic of them 
all. Without the genius of Titian, which lifted 
the latter in a measure above his environment 
and gave him certain traits of the world-master, 
Veronese had great talent and used it in perfect 
harmony with the spirit of the life he painted. 
His vast canvases, full of stately and harmonious 
figures draped in the gorgeous brocades Venice 
brought from the orient, express the splendor 
and almost monotonous luxury of Venetian life. 
It is the spirit that gives individuality, the 
intellectual, emotional and aesthetic content of 
experience that dififerentiates and deepens per- 
sonality. The multiplication of beautiful or 
gorgeous forms and the heaping up of luxurious 
surroundings may impress with a general mag- 
nificence but cannot conceal a poverty of the 
spirit. And thus the long succession of paint- 

54 



VENETIAN PAINTERS 



ings by Veronese, full of a splendor of color and 
an exhaustless wealth of magnificent figures in 
the stately pageant of Venetian life, nevertheless 
lack the depth of thought and ideal that 
makes every picture of Giotto or Botticelli, how- 
ever faulty in execution, an individual creation 
of genius, as difi^erent from every other as one 
life is from the next. 

In spite of his genius some measure of the 
same truth applies to Titian. His golden light- 
ing transfigures his subjects with something of 
the ideality which the situation of Venice gives 
to her. He was able to seize strongly marked 
types of the life about him and give them 
adequate and permanent expression. The indi- 
viduality that marks every work of genius 
distinguishes each painting of Titian. Yet he 
rarely expresses a spiritual ideal or a great 
human insight. The masterful grasp of history 
of Michael Angelo, the human and dramatic 
power of Leonardo, the transfigured spirituality 
of the Sistine Madonna, and the pathetic and 
unanswered hunger of Andrea del Sarto, are 
alike out of his sphere. He can translate into 
the immortal language of genius the golden 
splendor of Venetian life, but the spirituality and 
moral depth which was lacking in the life about 
him he could not attain. 



55 



THE ART OF VENICE 



THERE seems to be a smaller chasm between 
the masters of Venetian painting and the 
lesser artists than is the case at Florence. Is 
not this because imitation is easier than creation, 
and rather a work of talent than of genius ? To 
represent the splendor of Venetian life and copy 
its magnificent types of physical manhood and 
womanhood required a skill and talent which 
appears in varying degree in different artists. 
But to conceive and portray the drama of his- 
tory Michael Angelo paints on the ceiling of the 
Sistine Chapel, to give visual birth to the mysti- 
cal conception of transfigured maidenhood and 
motherhood Raphael achieves in the Sistine 
Madonna, or to see and fix the dramatic and 
human meaning of the crisis Leonardo paints in 
the Last Supper requires genius, which is widely 
separated from all degrees of talent and skill. 

THERE are no gargoyles on San Marco, 
there is no Dantesque gloom in the paint- 
ings of Venice. With all the extravagance of 
form in Venetian painting, the grotesque and 
terrible rarely enter. Is it partly because the 
Venetians were unimaginative ? 

A superabundance of magnificent forms and 
resplendent colors may embarrass rather than 
stimulate the imagination, and make art an 
artificial combination of imitated forms rather 



THE ART OF VENICE 



than a spontaneous creation from the spirit. To 
see too much may be to dream too little, as a 
luxuriant wealth of opportunity may paralyze 
the efiort that poverty awakens. 

But beyond this, was it not the sane health 
of Venetian life, the absorption in external 
action and enjoyment, that saved them from the 
weird gloom of the m.iddle ages and the north? 
The strength and the weakness of the idealist 
and dreamer were never theirs, while the limi- 
tations and the power of the man of wealth and 
action are everywhere expressed in their lives. 

IN SOME respects the Venetian painters 
developed new lines of representation of 
nature in art. But their work, if anticipating 
modern landscape painting, was quite unlike the 
latter. Their mountains and rocks are usually 
artificial, as with most Renaissance art. It is only 
in the phase of nature with which they were 
intimately acquainted, in the marvelous play of 
light and color on the sky, the clouds and the 
water — that they were true, idealistically and 
realistically, to the world they studied and loved. 

TO-DAY is gray and chill ; the clouds lower 
over Venice, and the water in the canals is 
a deeper and colder green. The startling colors 
of San Marco are softened and dulled, and the 

57 



VENICE 

marble porticoes and arcades are cold and dark. 
It is well to see Venice in this mood. If the 
splendor of color and the daily miracle of light 
are her dominant impression, nevertheless the 
gray moods must come, and they were present 
in the life and spirit of Venice as well as in the 
succession of her days. The magnificence in- 
volved a correlative slavery. The pomp of the 
oligarchic state rested upon the servility of the 
mass ; behind the marble palaces was the Ghetto. 
Venice is both ; and to remember one phase but 
be blind to the other is to see the sunshine and 
forget the days of gloom, to watch the thronged 
piazza of San Marco bathed in its wealth of 
color, and ignore the dark alleys lined with dead 
and silent houses whose feet are lapped by the 
chill water of the still canals. 

NIGHT falls and the waters of the lagoon 
shimmer under the gray sky. Across, 
the campanile and dome of San Giorgio Mag- 
giore are clearly outlined against the pearl 
of the sky. Five rowers in a barca bend 
rhythmically to their oars and send their craft 
speeding onward. Two boatmen in a barge 
manage with vigorous effort to keep the great 
black shape moving slowly. One by one the 
lights shine out on the distant islands and the 
far away domes sink more and more deeply into 
the sky. 

S8 



TITIAN 

LFlorence. November 28, 1898J 

WHAT Tintoretto has done with his pas- 
sionate energy in the golden bodies of his 
nude women, that Titian with a more quiet 
mastery has accompHshed in the relaxed volup- 
tuousness of his redining Venuses in the 
Tribune of the Uffizi. These women are splen- 
did courtezans without a trace of intellect or soul 
to transfigure their rich and harmonious bodies, 
yet lifted away by the idealization which the 
golden light upon them imparts. If less master- 
ful, Tintoretto seems to me more human, and 
the passionate life that radiates from his women 
is more attractive than the languorous sensual- 
ity of these imagined goddesses of pleasure. 

From the nude women of Titian to Andrea 
del Sarto's Madonna of the Harpies is a long 
step, no less psychologically than aesthetically. 
From the major tones of a positive golden 
atmosphere we pass to the minor chords of deli- 
cately mingled color, light, and shade, subtle and 
suggestive but strongly elusive. What Andrea 
meant to do, and what after all he accomplished, 
are almost equally difficult questions. This 
woman is no resplendent courtezan nor is she a 
spiritual ideal, she is not the human mother nor 
the self-abnegating Madonna of innocence and 
humility. Yet the face is of exquisite beauty and 
there is a subtle pathos in the unawakened 

59 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 



expression of the mouth and eyes. When the 
full sense of Andrea's sensitive and pathetic per- 
sonality has once come to us it is awakened by 
each of his pictures and becomes the subtly 
impressive background upon which all of his 
achievements and efforts are seen. 



60 



THE PROBLEM 



[Paris, November i, 1898] 

FOR every attainment one must renounce 
something. The problem of life is one of 
proportion. To affirm always the best, and 
renounce the lower, that is genius. 



61 



NEW ENGLAND 



[Walpole, New Hampshire, August 30, 1902] 

WHx\T a deep pathos there is in the deca- 
dence of the old virile New England life ! 
The return of families enriched elsewhere, 
spending lavishly and building luxurious sum- 
mer homes, does not compensate for the dying 
out of the simple, earnest farm life from which 
has come the leaven of our American nation. At 
least four families prospered formerly on the 
land where one dwindles out to-day. There is 
no calling back the old time : economic condi- 
tions have changed as vastly as social ones, and 
the dispersal of the New England stock through- 
out the nation has been a vast gain in our civ- 
ilization ; but to return to the old home is to 
feel the sadness of a decaying life. 

THE autumn haze is in the air, softening 
the distant meadows and transfiguring 
the rolling hills and the groups of trees with the 
mood of dreams. A breath of air, warm with 
the summer but fragrant of the autumn, touches 
the face and moves gently the boughs of the 
nearer apple-trees. One's imagination reaches 
back through the generations of children who 
have romped here and grown into sturdy man- 
hood and womanhood and passed — on. The 
changing seasons have gone year after year in 
swift, calm flight. Over and over, the haze of 

62 



NEIV ENGLAND 



autumn has made fainter the soft outlines of 
the hills, the winter has stripped the trees and 
laid their outHnes bare against the white fields 
of snow, spring has touched the old sleeping 
earth-mother into fragrant and breathing life, 
summer has brought its soft winds and warm 
wealth of green. 

The red Indian and his primeval forest are 
gone. The generations of sturdy farmers who 
cleared the fields and filled them with waving 
grain are gone. The children who trudged 
through the lanes and filled the little school- 
houses with merry, vigorous life are gone. The 
pine-trees spring up in the green meadows and 
the land threatens to slip back into the sav- 
agery of earlier days. Life is won only by 
ceaseless battle, and the good of yesterday is 
lost unless we achieve it anew to-day. 



63 



O Love, While Still 'tis Yours to Love I 

[Translated from the German of Freiligrath] 

OLOVE, while still 'tis yours to love ! 
O love, while love you still may keep ! 
The hour will come, the hour will come. 
When you shall stand by graves and weep ! 

And see that warmly glows your heart 
And love doth cherish, love doth give, 

As long as close against it beats 

Another heart where love doth live 1 

To him whose heart is opened you, 
O all you may of kindness show ! 

And fill his every hour with joy, 
And fill for him no hour with woe ! 

And govern well the hasty tongue. 
For words unkind so soon are born ! 

O God, I did not mean it so ! — 
But ah ! the other goes to mourn. 

O love, while still 'tis yours to love ! 

O love, while love you still may keep ! 
The hour will come, the hour will come. 

When you shall stand by graves and weep ! 

64 



WHILE STILL 'TIS YOURS TO LOVE 

Then shall you kneel upon the grave, 
And hide your tear-dimmed eyes (alas ! 

They see the other nevermore !) 

In the long, dampened churchyard grass. 

And say : '' O see me weeping here, 

As I upon thy grave bow low ! 
Forgive me, that I hurt you, Dear ! 

O God, I did not mean it so ! " 

Nor sees nor hears he as of yore, 

Comes not again to banish woe ; 
The oft-kissed mouth speaks nevermore, 

" Dear, I forgave you long ago ! " 

He did forgive you long ago, 

But often did the hot tears fall 
For you and for your cruel words — 

But peace — he rests, beyond your call ! 

O love, while still 'tis yours to love ! 

O love, while love you still may keep ! 
The hour will come, the hour will come, 

When you shall stand by graves and weep ! 



65 



SOLITUDE 



[Lucei-ne, November 14, 1898] 

THERE is no doubt that a certain repose of 
life is necessary, not only for balance and 
elevation of spirit, but for the highest creative 
energy. If, as Goethe affirms, we must reach 
out into the manifold human world to avoid 
degenerating into a narrow egotismi, it is equally 
necessary to have periods of serene and quiet 
repose and reception of beauty in nature, art and 
thought to avoid the dissipation of the energies 
of the spirit. 



es 



GREECE 

[On ship between Euboea and Andros, October, 1901] 

ANOTHER calm and exquisite day, but dif- 
ferent from yesterday. The sea is a far 
deeper blue, the mountains of Euboea are out- 
lined so clearly that every change of surface and 
every rock shows in the transparent air. One 
feels the southern world about one. And last 
night how all-wonderful were the stars ! Venus 
in the west was so brilliant that a distinct path 
of light was shed across the sea. The milky way 
was like a great filmy band of white clouds sown 
with innumerable gems. The Pleiades were just 
above the horizon in the east, and over the 
whole cloudless heaven rested the countless 
multitude of worlds and suns. 



67 



ATHENS 

^Athens, October, igoi] 

I AM sitting amid the columns of the Parthe- 
non. Far below, the blue sea stretches away 
to the fainter blue of the islands. Mutely the 
scarred columns express the vandalism of the 
past. But beneath and beyond this they speak 
of how great a world ! Think of it : Plato walked 
here, Socrates conversed with his pupils in the 
streets below, St. Paul preached perhaps from 
the neighboring hill to w^orshipers of the Un- 
known God! The whole is too overpowering, I 
cannot grasp it. 

THERE is something infinitely pathetic 
as well as inexpressibly exalting about this 
hill and its ruined fragments. Whole walls are 
made of piled up pieces of exquisitely sculptured 
marble. All about lie fallen columns, archi- 
traves, capitals. The ruin is different in its 
impression from that of Rome — Oh, as different 
as the destinies of the two cities ! There, one is 
impressed with the vastness of the ruined world, 
here, with the marvelous beauty that is wrecked 
beyond recall. Awe is the mood in Rome, in- 
finite regret and admiration mingled is the mood 
of Athens. 

From each slight point of elevation to which 
one climbs marvelous views stretch away : blue 
sky and light fleeces of white cloud, blue sea 

68 



MODERN ATHENS 



slopes of Hymettos and Pentelikon. The Greeks 
must have had deep love of natural beauty, 
though with little of the romantic sentiment and 
even sentimentality in the modern appreciation 
of nature. If they enjoyed nature more as chil- 
dren respond to the sunshine, that they did enjoy 
and consciously love it the sites chosen for their 
temples alone would prove. 

WHAT a blessed sense of freedom there is 
in this Greek world as compared with 
Constantinople. You go about as you choose ; 
no one bothers you. A guide politely offers his 
services but desists as courteously when you 
decline them. I have climbed all over the south 
slope of the Acropolis and sit here in the Odeion 
of Herodes Atticus quite undisturbed. 

Modern Athens seems alive and active, if with 
rather simple life. The number of new buildings 
appropriately constructed in harmony with the 
past is astonishing. The town is filled with 
little cafes which furnish favorite lounging 
places. The coffee is served in the Turkish 
style and is deHcious. The majority of the 
homes are small and the people, excepting the 
government hangers-'on, seem pitifully poor. 
Yet there is everywhere a spirit of cheerfulness 
born of freedom, and therefore a promise of 
better times. 

69 



MODERN ATHENS 



It is interesting to note that here as in Russia 
they speak of what is going on " in Europe " as 
if it were quite a different land from this. Indeed 
Russia, Turkey and Greece seem to stand aside 
from European civiHzation and to belong as 
much to the orient as to the west. This is 
accentuated here by the fact that so large a por- 
tion of the Greek world has always been Asiatic. 

WHAT a great day this has been! The 
Stadion, the view from the hills behind 
it, a walk by the dry bed of the Ilissos where, 
when the river and its banks were full of charm, 
Socrates walked and talked with his companion 
in the Phsedrus, the study of the ancient 
theaters on the slopes of the Acropolis, two 
hours in the museum, and sunset from Mount 
Lykabettos ! The whole effect has not been 
disappointing. A sense of wonderful, inex- 
pressible beauty and a sense of pathetic ruin 
and desolation — these made up the impression 
of Athens upon me. 

The sunset from Lykabettos was beautiful 
beyond description. Clouds hung low in the 
western sky, and as the sun came behind they 
shone like great battlements in blazing fire. 
From there the clouds scattered over the heaven 
took fire, and the sea beneath reflected the glow. 
Mountain beyond mountain rose in majesty. 

70 



THE GREEK SPIRIT 



Nature is alive and beautiful as when the Par- 
thenon first left the artist's hand and the great 
dramas of ^schylus were first given in the 
theater of Dionysos. 

How difficult it is to recall the Greek life, to 
fill in with the imagination what the few surviv- 
ing fragments carry of the older world. One 
must say it over and over : here Plato walked, 
there Socrates talked with his pupils, here 
^schylus entered the theater with bowed head 
and intense face, wondering if the victory was 
to be his, there Pericles passed with Phidias 
his friend talking over the projected improve- 
ments of the AcropoHs. Yes, it is all true, but 
how difficult, how difficult to make it real ! 
One seems to be walking in a dream. 

I DO not think that Goethe ever really under- 
stood the Greek world, profoundly as he was 
influenced by it. His attitude toward it remained 
to a certain extent scholastic. Nothing could be 
further from the Greek spirit than the mytholog- 
ical machinery of the second part of Faust. It is 
a scholastic study of Greece rather than a living 
expression of the Greek spirit, archaeological 
rather than poetic. That Goethe was deeply 
moved by Greece there is no doubt ; but he 
remained distinctly a German. He reminds us of 
the thoroughgoing German student of antiqui- 

71 



THE GREEK SPIRIT 



ties, so un-Hellenic in his attitude toward the 
Greek past. In Schiller I find far more of the 
truly sympathetic rendering of the Greek spirit, 
though with less conscious effort and less use of 
the material of Greek tradition. 

The whole movement of pseudo-classicism is a 
false lead. The reproduction of gods, god- 
desses, centaurs and sea-monsters in the art of 
the eighteenth century, and even to-day, is as 
remote from the true Greek spirit as it is lavish 
in imitating the accident of Greek material and 
tradition. The true art is not one that copies 
the detail of Greek works but which executes 
with the same freedom of spirit and the same 
love of beauty and truth to nature as in the 
Greek. And such art will produce works iden- 
tical in nobility and beauty with the Greek 
sculptures, but as widely dififerent from these 
as our civilization is remote from that of clas- 
sical days. 

THERE are not In the National Museum 
In Athens the number of strikingly beau- 
tiful, well-preserved works one finds in the 
greater European galleries. But the average 
is surprisingly high, and in spite of the mutila- 
tion many of the works have suffered, one can 
study better here than elsewhere the real spirit 
of Greek sculpture. 

72 



FUNERAL RELIEFS 



I had not expected the depth of feeling present 
in the funeral reliefs. It is almost inconceivable 
that these v/ere done by common workmen, but 
this fact adds greater significance to them. They 
express the human sentiment of the everyday 
people of ancient Greece. There is something 
inexpressibly touching in them. The reaching 
out of the hand to hold back the departing one, 
the solemn farewell, the peering into the gloom 
— these were the same with the light-hearted 
Greeks as with us of later and sadder days. I 
have never elsewhere felt the humanity of the 
Greeks so strongly as in the presence of these 
memorials of the mystery. 

Moreover the funeral reliefs give a higher idea 
of the place of Greek women than one gains 
from other sources. Whatever the limitations 
in the lives of Athenian women, family affection, 
warm personal love were much the same in the 
Periclean days as they are to-day. Again one is 
impressed with the simple and common char- 
acter of the elements that make up human life 
in all times and places. 

I HAVE come to understand that the use of 
color in Greek sculpture and architecture 
was right. The Greek world is full of color, 
though form dominates. In their original bril- 
liant beauty, warm colors were as harmonious 

73 



GREEK ART 



to the Greek temples and marbles as the mel- 
low tint of the decaying stone is to them in 
their present ruined state. 

FROM the finished and conventionalized art 
of Egypt and Assyria, Greek art takes its 
start. Working within the conventional lines, 
gradually the freer Greek spirit asserts itself. 
The body begins to swell into true lines beneath 
the conventional folds of the drapery, the set 
smile and features become individualized. When 
the Greeks broke with these conventional models 
it was as when the Elizabethans threw ofif the 
restraint of the miracle-plays or as when the 
Italians in the Renaissance gave up all Byzan- 
tine traditions and turned to life. 

GREEK art everywhere strives to reach an 
ideal beauty, and truth to nature is always 
subordinated to this aim. Does this account for 
the conventional element present throughout 
Greek art ? It is found in the smile of the 
archaic statue, in the minor decoration of a 
temple, in the type of capital and column. Never 
did the Greeks develop true portrait art, always 
the features of a real human being were idealized 
in harmony with the conventional conception 
of beauty. 

74 



ATHENS 

TO-DAY has given me just what I needed to 
complete my impression of Athens — a 
clear sense of the surrounding landscape : bare, 
rocky hills rising into mountains with here and 
there short pines upon them, dry plains with 
world-old olives lifting gnarled stems and sil- 
ver-gray foilage, blue water with beyond bluer 
mountains rising grandly, and overhead intense 
sunshine and transparent air magically adorning 
all. The view of the bay of Salamis was inex- 
pressibly beautiful, having the added appeal of 
its great battle. One stood below the hill of 
Xerxes and tried to call up the past — how diffi- 
cult it is ! 

THE few fragments of the mediaeval Chris- 
tian world seem strangely out of place in 
Athens. Here mediaeval civilization (and super- 
stition) never submerged and transformed the 
classic past as at Rome. The little metropoli- 
tan church is a symbol of the middle ages here ; 
tiny, built of fragments of ancient structures, 
with old reliefs and capitals incongruously set 
in all over the walls, one even upside down, it 
is expressive of the slight foothold the middle 
age gained in Athens. 



75 



ATHENS 

[Athens, October, 1901] 

TO-DAY the air is fresh and clear after the 
rain. yEgina and the mountains of the 
Peloponnesus stand out with startling clearness 
beyond the blue water of the gulf. Every defile 
and ridge in Hymettos is plainly visible. The 
Acropolis and its ruins are almost fiercely out- 
lined against the sky. Such a day must be a true 
Greek day. 

I AM at home in Athens and Florence. I 
understand these people so v/ell: all the 
lightness of spirit, the quick recovery from 
strain, the passion for beauty, the capacity for 
deep religious earnestness, the vein of melan- 
choly withal underneath, all the lightness and 
versatility : I understand and love these people, 
they are mine. 

[On the Adriatic below Corfu, October, 1901] 

THE evening and the morning Hght is beau- 
tiful beyond all expression. There is in it 
more of the powerful tones of brown, yellow and 
gold, yet softened and deepened, than in the 
northern world. Last evening at sunset Mount 
Parnassos across the gulf of Corinth was trans- 
figured with this deep light till it seemed as if 
one could hardly bear the beauty. I have never 
seen such color in landscapes elsewhere. This 

76 



GREECE 

morning at sunrise the same light rested over 
the sea and upon the mountains of the near-by 
shore. 

MY VISIT to Greece is ended. What an 
experience it has been ! In the main I 
found what I had expected, but in some ways I 
was obHged to correct my preconception. For 
one thing, I found more color in the Greek 
world than I anticipated. It is true, form dom- 
inated in ancient art, but it is equally true that 
color if everywhere subordinated, nevertheless 
lent its sensuous warmth to the loftiest crea- 
tions of Greek genius. Art remained simpler 
with the Greeks than it became with the Ital- 
ians, there was far less of the illusion of per- 
spective and the appeal to the fancy and imag- 
ination. Greek art realized its dream and never 
tortured and thwarted with the suggestion of 
the unattainable. Yet withal Greek art covers 
the whole circle of sensuous appeal ; it was not 
partial, but universal. 

I am surprised to find how thoroughly I had 
learned to appreciate the Greek spirit before 
going to Greece. If the experience has been a 
wonder of joy and a revelation of beauty, after 
all it has only brought out into clearness and 
fixed with certainty impressions and conceptions 
I had already attained. 

77 



"One Day Is Like All" 

[From a fragment of Mimnermus] 

TRULY the sun hath obtained a most griev- 
ous task each and all days ; 

Never a moment's rest cometh, though 
wearied out. 
Unto himself or his horses, what time the 

dawn rosy-fingered, 
Leaving old Ocean's breast, mounteth aloft to 

the sky. 
Him sweetly-sleeping bears o'er the water's 

crest the much-loved boat, 
Hollowed in honored gold, the work of the god 

of fire. 
Fitted with wings and sailing from far-off 

Hesperides islands. 
Coming unto the land called Ethopian. 
Here a ready chariot standeth all harnessed and 

waiting 
Till the early-born — the Dawn, shall step from 

the sea ; 
Then again his chariot the son of Hyperion 

enters, 
(Taking upon himself the work of another day.) 



78 



MUSIC 

[Rome, December 17, 1898] 

WHAT a sense of sadness as well as beauty 
in tender music heard at some distance ! 
Then it takes an impersonal quality, bringing 
out all the mysterious shadow that is cast by joy. 
Subtle, non-intellectual, appeaHng at once to the 
most fundamental and the most highly refined 
feelings of the human heart', music is the art 
singularly expressive of the highly complicated, 
deeply personal character of modern life. 



79 



From the Night to the Night 

THE lights of the Paris boulevard flared in 
the cold dismal rain. The few men smok- 
ing and drinking at the Cafe Grand looked 
gloomy enough. Out of the night and the rain, 
into the flare of the Cafe lights, came an old 
man. He held his hat in his hand, and the rain 
beat down upon beautiful snow-white hair that 
should have been the glory of a noble old age. 
He stopped before one of the tables where sat a 
heavy, coarse-faced man smoking and drinking. 
The old man did not speak. His head and 
hands trembled with palsy. The pitiable look 
of an ill-treated child was in his face. He held 
out first one deformed and trembling hand, and 
then the other. He went from one table to the 
next, and to the next. No one gave him any- 
thing; and carrying his hat in his trembling 
hand, the old man passed out into the rain and 
the gloom of the night. 



80 



5 TRA T FORD-ON -A VON 



[Stratford-on-Avon, June 26, 1898] 

THE sunset last evening was an apocalypse. 
We stood on the bridge ; down the placid 
river the church spire rose above the green of 
the trees. There was no wind to ruffle the sur- 
face of the water or disturb the peace of the 
hour. Masses of clouds filled the heavens and 
gave a more sombre hue to the vivid green of 
the fields. In the west a deep rift in the clouds 
was filled with wonderful golden light, while 
from it radiated upward streams of Hght fading 
from gold to deeper and more quiet tones. All 
about were sounds of birds going to sleep. 

THE cathedral aisle of trees leading to the 
Stratford church is such a natural temple 
as must have suggested Gothic interiors to the 
builders of the north. One looks down the long 
arch at the gray church, while about are thickly 
strewn graves under the trees whose boughs 
shelter the innumerable choir of birds. The 
sweet peace of ages of repose seems to rest 
over it all — 3. fitting sepulcher for the poet of 
humanity. 

ONE is impressed here, as in every place 
where the world has been transfigured by 
a great soul, with the commonplace character of 
the life from which greatness has sprung. The 

81 



STRA T FORD-ON -A VON 



people of Stratford bustle up and down its 
streets untouched by the glamour of Shake- 
speare's memory. And as they are in reference 
to Shakespeare so are men generally in relation 
to divine things. We are blind and deaf to the 
revelation that broods over us and around us. 
The book from Mrhich Shakespeare read is open 
before us ; the Sphinx of the ages waits breath- 
less to rede her own riddle if w^e will but listen. 



82 



SHAKESPEARE 



[Scranton, Pa., May 4, 1900] 

IN ANTONY and Cleopatra is revealed the 
true Shakespeare. Nowhere else is there 
a greater abandonment to the reckless flood of 
passion, and nowhere else does the poetry show 
a more complete unionwith the mood expressed. 
Words, exclamations, images poured out in a 
daring flood, yet never once the height lost, 
never a descent to the ranting plane. Who 
else could have done it? 

There is something awe-inspiring in the colos- 
sal expenditure of life. Renan it is who says 
that a great crime is " beautiful, like an abysm,'* 
and such heroic passion as Antony's, aban- 
doned and terrible, has this sublimity. All that 
makes the sunset of Rome luridly impressive is 
gathered up in this play. As Plato taught, the 
worst things in the world are the corruption of 
the best, and the virile manhood of Rome, dis- 
torted, gives us the mad passion of Antony. 

WHAT does such tragedy do for us? It 
moves us deeply with the spectacle of 
life. It takes us out from our narrow sphere into 
the great world, and we feel the wide vigor of the 
storm and the sweep of the sea. It amazes us 
with the vast forces that surge through human 
existence. In its presentation of life in relation 
to law it teaches us the deepest lessons, not 

83 



SHAKESPEARE 

didactically, but involved in the concrete char- 
acters it portrays. It exalts us with the lifting 
power of beauty and the wider vision art 
achieves. What more would you? It fulfills, 
condensed and focused, the function of life itself. 
Thus art is a kind of other experience through 
which we may complete our lives. 

WHAT complete harmony with ethical laws 
there is in Antony and Cleopatra as 
contrasted with the Merchant of Venice. The 
latter play leaves us satisfied with the escape 
of Antonio and the punishment of Shylock's 
cruelty, yet pained at the unfair baiting of the 
Jew and wondering how these " Christians " can 
be so care-free in their merriment while Shylock 
goes out alone into the night. Is it true to life? 
Yes, but it is not all the truth, and it is the func- 
tion of art to show us every tendency it presents 
worked out to its last conclusion. The cruelty 
of Shylock receives its just punishment, but the 
humanity that sobs of the ring Jessica bartered 
for a monkey — *' It was my turquoise ; I had it 
of Leah when I was a bachelor : I would not 
have given it for a wilderness of monkeys " — 
remains all unfulfilled. The generosity and 
nobility of Antonio, Bassanio and Portia re- 
ceives its right end, but the cruelty and race 
hatred toward Shylock is given and left with- 

84 



SHAKESPEARE 

out result. Shakespeare himself would seem 
to have felt this, blindly perhaps, for he has 
given us the last anti-climax scene w^here '' the 
moonlight sleeps upon the bank " and the music 
calms us for the repose of night. 

In Antony and Cleopatra, v^^ritten probably 
long after the Merchant, every strand is woven 
out to the end. The mad passion of Antony, his 
heroic strength, his lust, and his loyalty to cer- 
tain friends and aims — all are carried out to the 
last conclusion. So is it with Cleopatra, and 
thus where the Merchant of Venice leaves us 
charmed, but perplexed and unsatisfied, Antony 
and Cleopatra leaves us stirred and saddened, 
but at rest in the sense that there could be no 
other conclusion and that the action in each 
phase is finished. 

THE highest art never photographs life, it 
reveals life. A machine can copy, only a 
genius can interpret the world. The painter does 
not copy the expression a face may have shown, 
he divines and paints the expression the face 
must have shown had the man fully revealed 
himself. So Antony does not say what a certain 
Roman chieftain might have said; he speaks 
what Antony, if Antony had spoken adequately, 
must have said. 

And to this raising of the character to a 

85 



SHAKESPEARE 



higher plane of expression art adds an atmos- 
phere that focuses and interprets all. The 
background upon which each action is por- 
trayed, the mood the whole composition of the 
scene suggests, the meeting and grouping of the 
different characters — all this is arranged not as 
it might have been in life, but as it must have 
been if life had completed itself and revealed 
its last meaning in the particular situation. 
Thus the artist obeys, not historic possibility, 
but artistic — that is, ethical necessity. 

'HERE is always something subliiile in life 
that rises above the plane of selfish calcu- 
lation. Prudence, if a necessary, is a mean 
virtue, and the abandonment of life to heroic 
imprudence always awakens a thrill which does 
not come from the well-turned schemes of care- 
ful thrift. The ends that should sweep us off our 
feet and make us forego prudence are love, 
aspiration, the need of one's country, one's 
friend, one's faith, the great calls of the spirit 
everywhere. But lower ends may do the same 
with us, as passion does to Antony or mad ambi- 
tion to Lady Macbeth. Yet even then, with all 
the pitiful waste of life and distortion of its aim, 
there is still something of the grandeur that 
comes from forgetting lesser calculations of 
expediency in one supreme struggle of the spirit 

86 



SHAKESPEARE 



for what it has taken as its end. What Browning 
says in the Statue and the Bust — ^that a crime 
may do as well as a virtue to test the forces of 
the spirit — is deeply true ; and the expression of 
the splendid powers of the spirit in vigorous 
action must always be impressive, whatever the 
end to which they are directed. 

WA.S the dark woman of the Sonnets the 
cause of Shakespeare's Cleopatra ? Some- 
where he had learned to look into a passionate 
woman's nature. Cleopatra is distinctly earthly, 
yet earth of such burning intensity it seems 
almost fire. She is all passion, yet passion so 
absolute it is nearly love. A woman to sweep 
a man into the tangle of her desires and lead him 
a charmed and yet restless life ; his fate to thirst 
the more as he drinks from the fountain of her 
beauty, satiated with delight, yet tantalized in 
the satisfaction. 



87 



SHAKESPEARE 

[Scranton, Pa., May 18, 1900] 

I FEEL — yielding myself thus week after week 
to the magic of Shakespeare's genius — as if I 
had been dwelling for a time among the high 
Alps. The air is so different from that of the fat 
plains — pure, clear, intense — one breathes with 
fuller draughts. When I came among them the 
sun shone and the lower summits glowed with 
the sweet radiance of Love's Labor's Lost. A 
night followed when the peaks were dimly out- 
lined, but fairy dells gleamed with magic in a 
Midsummer Night's Dream. Then followed 
clouds gathering and threatening a storm, but 
the black masses rolled back, and though still 
sombre the nearer peaks glowed in the radiant 
sunset of the Merchant of Venice. 

Since then have followed days of successive 
storms, each appearing more terrible than the 
last. The very mountains seemed to battle in 
Julius Csesar, while the heaven and earth seemed 
sinking in a torrent of fire in Antony and Cleo- 
patra. In Lear an avalanche fell, sweeping 
trees and houses before it as it rushed down. 
One fair morning dawned rosy and sweet, but 
before the first hours were past darkened deeper 
and deeper into the silent eclipse of Othello ; 
while once toward evening there fell a weird 
passion of lightning and rain in Macbeth. The 
nights between were clear and starlit — all but 

88 



SHAKESPEARE 

one. It began with clouds looming ominous; 
these darkened rapidly and spread in great 
masses over the peaks. There were flashes of 
starlight and then deeper gloom. Strange, far- 
away rumblings of weird thunder were heard, 
with at intervals sudden gusts of wind and rain. 
All night the storm threatened, and when morn- 
ing dawned, gray and comfortless, there settled 
down the gloom of steady and ceaseless rain in 
the dark close of Hamlet. 

But this was not the end. The period of 
storm passed ; I came down from the terrible 
heights into the Alpine valleys. The mutterings 
of thunder were heard as the clouds in dark 
masses drew away, and at evening the gray was 
tinged with gold and rose in the sunset of the 
Winter's Tale ; while at night the calm, serene 
shining of the stars and the sense of peace was 
over all with the end of the Tempest. 



89 



Laddie 

[Munich, September x, 1901] 

I HEAR your voice ! 
With soft half-laugliing, singing 
Three dear notes; and then a sigh, 
And soon the dear eyes close 
And you are still, in sleep. 

Dear little Laddie, 
With your fine, intense, glad life ! 
The vast wide world before you — 
All its storm and pain and joy, 

What will you do? 

How I love you 
Dear little Laddie with the loving heart! 

let me hold you close 

And keep you ever, ever near my heart ! 

But you must walk alone, 

And when the hurt comes 

And the long, long way is hard, 

Think how your father's heart 

Ached for you, hungered so to keep 

The pain away. 

Dear little Laddie, 
Sleep, sleep gently still ; 

1 kiss your cheek and touch your wayward hair. 



90 



THE SEA 

[At sea, off the coast of Spain, May 27, 1901] 

THESE days have been full of joy. The 
summer sea, now blue and stretching 
away like some fair, indefinable dream, now 
gray or even inky black under the play of the 
ever-changing clouds, has appealed to me as 
never before. Night after night of transfigur- 
ing moonlight, and day after day of peaceful 
saihng through the living deep have given rest 
and peace. 

The boundless reach of the sea at times 
oppresses, at times rests one. The vast sweep 
of the circle stretching away and away until the 
horizon waves seem to beat against the sky, 
suggesting the unmeasured reach still beyond, 
is almost overpowering. No wonder the circle 
has been taken as the symbol of infinity. 



91 



IDEAS 

[Paris, October 26, 1898] 

THE spirit is fertilized by new and masterful 
ideas. The accumulation of the material of 
knowledge is useless or worse without the birth 
of conceptions which can interpret the material. 
In the middle age painters and sculptors went 
on copying the conventional figures of Christ 
and the Madonna, here and there an inspired 
genius adding an unusual touch of gravity or 
nobility. Suddenly in the Renaissance a crowd 
of new and beautiful forms springs into being, 
and every humble worker shows some measure, 
however small, of the creative power. It is the 
result of a new conception of life and beauty, 
which so charged the atmosphere of the Re- 
naissance that every one breathed in something 
of it. Creative power without the presence of 
fresh, fertilizing ideas is as much of an anomaly 
in human life as parthenogenesis in nature. In 
both cases the masculine function of impregna- 
tion precedes fertile production. 



92 



NOVELTY 



[Paris, October 19, 1898] 

IN ANY period of great artistic luxuriance 
it is inevitable that some workers should 
strive to succeed through mere novelty. But 
this is always an unworthy method and no true 
success can be attained by it. Novelty is not 
originality, and a work that strikes the atten- 
tion with a theatrical shock of surprise is sure 
to weary and offend after a time. 



93 



ART 

[Paris, October 19, 1898] 

THE Renaissance is the period when the im- 
mense increase occurs in the production of 
art for purely decorative purposes. This is cer- 
tainly not the highest motive inspiring art, and 
alone it cannot result in the loftiest work. 
Benvenuto Cellini reaches the highest point of 
art with no aim above adornment — " art for 
art's sake " in the lower sense. One hesitates 
to use that oft-repeated phrase, however, for it 
may mean art for Hfe's sake, art inspired by the 
highest creative purpose and undegraded by any 
narrowlv utilitarian or didactic aim. 

But the decorative aim as such belongs in the 
lower and not the higher class. When painting 
and sculpture are produced to adorn super- 
ficially the private life of capricious individuals 
it is as when literature is made a mere polite 
fringe to fashionable and frivolous society. In 
such cases the dignity of art is surely sacrificed, 
and it is regained only when the inspiration be- 
comes as earnest as the deepest realities of hu- 
man life. 



94 



MASTERPIECES 

[Paris, September 30, 1898] 

HOW often one is impressed with the 
fact that there are few really great works 
in the world. There is much that is great in 
possibility, and much that contains elements of 
greatness, but the works which as a whole are 
completely satisfying are few indeed. In the 
multitude of paintings in the Louvre, selected 
from the masterpieces of ten centuries, are there 
a hundred that satisfy? Among the crowd of 
statues how sublimely the Venus de Milo and 
the Winged Victory stand out. How few among 
the hundreds of operas, repeated year after 
year, give unmarred joy and an uplift of the 
spirit. 

If, therefore, one selected more rigorously the 
sources and associations of one's life, might it 
not be possible to live more constantly with the 
best? And to live in an atmosphere of adequate 
and masterly achievement should certainly ex- 
ercise a lifting power upon the spirit which 
would make one less unworthy to live in com- 
munion with the rare souls of history. 



95 



PESSIMISM 



[San Francisco, March 22, 1897] 

I THINK I have discovered why pessimism 
has such high artistic possibiUties. We 
never accept a pessimistic theory of the universe 
quietly and intellectually ; our spirit rises up in 
rebellion against the world it portrays. We 
know in the human heart and mind a hunger 
for rationality and eternity, a thirst for per- 
manent love and justice that are infinitely higher 
than a world of blind mechanical change. Hence 
if the outer world seems to us the latter we re- 
volt against it with supreme force, and in this 
revolt our emotional and imaginative life is ex- 
cited to the highest point of activity. It is this 
that gives pessmism its powerful appeal in art, 
and at the same time explains the lift to our 
faith which may come from a poem of despair. 
The protest against the gods is an affirmation 
of God ; the reaction against the world without, 
which seems a failure, is an affirmation of the 
dignity and nobility of the world we know within 
the human spirit and which is after all divine. 
Thus I never lay down Omar without a stronger 
faith in the eternity of the best. 



96 



ROME 

[Rome, October, 1901] 

HOW Strange and yet how familiar Rome 
seems ! After Athens I am impressed 
with the vastness of the city in space and time. 
The cHmate seems distinctly more northern and 
all day yesterday as I rode through olive fields 
and vineyards I was impressed with the luxuri- 
ance of the vegetation as compared with the 
bare beauty of Greece. Athens stands for 
one supreme influence in human history, at- 
taining its expression in a single brilliant period. 
Rome stands for a maze of influence, layer on 
layer of civilization being deposited here 
through a long lapse of centuries. One can 
grasp Athens and touch the heart of her spirit, 
one is awed and confused by Rome. 

AFTER Athens the Vatican marbles satisfy 
me even less than before. It is impossible 
to understand Greek art from this collection. 
Doubtless there are many works here spoiled in 
smoothing and restoring, but the impression 
made now by many of them is one of cold, life- 
less *' stone-dolls." The dignity of content, the 
exquisite beauty of the true Greek art are alike 
lacking. No wonder pseudo-classicism went so 
far astray, since it drew its conceptions of Greek 
art from such works as these. 



97 



ROME 

[Rome, December, iSgS] 

THERE is no city like Rome. Nowhere else 
in the world have such tremendous storms 
of human life centered. Asia, Africa and 
Europe, the south and the north, the east and 
the west have met and struggled here in a great 
cataclysm of life. As the Forum is sunk below 
the level of the street, so the ancient world 
seems mysteriously sleeping just beneath the 
present civilization in Rome, waiting for some 
strange magic to waken it again to life. 

It is interesting to see how much of the an- 
cient as compared with the mediaeval world has 
survived at Rome. The present Catholic church 
is her best m-cmorial of the middle age while of 
the ancient civilization countless remains have 
been excavated. The fact too is pregnant with 
significance : for it is not the external expres- 
sions of the middle age which are a living force 
to-day, but rather its great spiritual aspirations, 
while of the ancient world the external, objec- 
tive phases of life are a vital inheritance at 
present. It was what the mediaeval world 
aspired to be, as it was what the ancient world 
achieved, that gives the permanent value for 
subsequent life. 



98 



ROME 

[Rome, December. 1898] 

HOW one feels in Rome the prodigal wealth 
and waste of life and action in the profli- 
gate decline of the ancient empire. The vast ar- 
chitectural structures were built by common 
workmen— an army of them, not to speak of the 
host engaged in quarrying and shipping marble 
and travertine and in making bricks. The men 
who did this work had a narrow horizon and 
labored for the wage of the day or as slaves for 
the mere bread they received. What was their 
Hfe? And upon what human slavery and fear 
and ignominy were these splendid structures 
built ! This is the pathos of ancient civilization 
— the grandeur of it resting upon the backs of a 
dumb multitude. The earthquakes of human 
struggle miust shatter such a foundation and in 
the end overthrow the civilization erected upon 
it. The temples and palaces that last must be 
built for the multitude as well as by it, they 
must be the creation of free and inteUigent ac- 
tion and not the product of the tyrannous com- 
pulsion of unmotived hands. 

I HAVE seen St. Peter's! Last night under 
the moonlight and against the marvelous 
background of the sky and its myriad stars, all 
distracting accidents were submerged and the 
vast dome upon the majestic temple stood out in 

99 
L.ofC. 



ROME 

harmonious simplicity. It was a revelation of 
the beauty of the main lines and proportions 
of the structure when extrinsic elements are 
removed. 

In front the great colonnade swept away like 
a hundred colossal temples stretched out m a 
line of columns. Behind, the Vatican rose dark 
and ominous, an occasional light burning in an 
upper window. One felt how startlingly com- 
manding was the power almost imprisoned 
within it, yet reaching out to an unequalled 
mastery of a vast part of the world. 



TOO 



HABIT 

[London, September 23, 1898] 

ONE should have the greatest simplicity of 
physical habits combined with the largest 
flexibility. How hard the combination is to 
attain, and yet how important to a life at once 
sane and fuU ! It is the same problem present 
everywhere in living — the problem of unstable 
equilibrium — of an adjustment that is ever in 
process and never crystallized. 



lOI 



CHATEAUBRIAND 



[Hanford, California, December lo, 1897] 

IT IS difficult to express the effect Chateau- 
briand's Atala and Rene have upon me. 
DeHcate aHke in sentiment and execution, they 
seem to involve nevertheless a subtle weakness. 
Is it not due to the separation of refined senti- 
ment from the sterner action of life? Is it not 
the very weakness of the cultivated classes of 
French society in the period of the revolution? 
The separation of a cultivated class from the 
more severe realities of the struggle in the midst 
of which the mass of people lives injures both 
classes. The struggle for existence becomes 
sordid and bitter, the culture of the few, selfish 
and unsound. Unbalanced by vigorous action, 
sentiment degenerates into sentimentality; un- 
elevated by sentiment, action becomes sordid 
and debased. The world in which Chateaubriand 
lived was shocked into a recognition of realities, 
brutal and agonizing enough, by the revolution, 
but before that it had lived in its own introspec- 
tive imaginings and fancifully created senti- 
ments. Chateaubriand turns to the new world, 
not so much because it is a fresh field for real 
life and action, as because it furnishes a fitting 
theater for the play of the self-born fancies of 
the heart. 

Rousseau's attitude is at once very like this 
and yet widely diflferent. In his idealization of 

102 



ROUSSEAU 



the noble savage there Is the play of the 
same fanciful sentiment present in Chateau- 
briand, but the belief in the essential rightness 
of the instincts and emotions of the heart and 
the strong desire to give them spontaneous and 
unhampered expression in life gives Rousseau 
his stimulating virility, so wanting in the dreamy 
melancholy of Chateaubriand. 

The im.pression of the consoling power of 
Christianity which Chateaubriand wishes to give 
us in Atala is perhaps imparted less than the 
sense of repulsion toward a religion which could 
so fatally mislead a simple and unspoiled nature 
through the arbitrary assertion of false and mis- 
taken ideals. The authority of medieval Chris- 
tianity over sensitive and credulous spirits 
is as dangerous as it is remarkable. Chateau- 
briand's Atala presents all the conditions for the 
sentimental reaction of Rousseau against an 
authoritative order which Chateaubriand as sen- 
timentally upholds. 



103 



FREEDOM 



WE crave freedom, but freedom is never an 
end in itself; it is a means to be used 
for further aims. Its value lies in the extent to 
which it can assist the development of life. To 
possess freedom with no life for which to use it 
is the bitterest farce. One of the saddest sit- 
uations in human experience comes when, hav- 
ing previously desired freedom, we discover that 
we have attained it just when the objects to 
which we had hoped to dedicate it are irrevoca- 
bly lost. Life never means complete freedom, 
and every action and relation is an added bond. 
Life is to be attained, not through a non-moral 
freedom of caprice, but through a glad welcom- 
ing and loyal fulfillment of every bond and obli- 
gation which comes in the daily path of life. 



T04 



LECKY 

[Martha's Vineyard, June i6, 1900] 

LECKY'S Map of Life is a most interesting 
expression of the cultivated Englishman. 
Grave, reserved, practical, avoiding over-state- 
ment, without enthusiasm and inspiration — it 
could come only from England. There is a sin- 
gular lack of unity, of fusing power in the book. 
It is a kind of later Bacon's Essays, without the 
epigrammatic intensity of Bacon, but with the 
same worldly wisdom applied to the detail of 
life. One is alternately interested and de- 
pressed by the book. It compels respect con- 
stantly, but the one highest element of wisdom 
is wanting throughout. There are many excel- 
lent and shrewd observations, all true, but no- 
where the combining principle that transfigures 
these with light and integrates them in relation. 
Is not this the cause of the element of gloom 
present throughout the book? Nothing con- 
fuses and saddens more than the clear apprecia- 
tion of a multitude of details which seem in re- 
current and irrepressible conflict with each 
other. 



105 



DUTY 

[San Francisco, January 37, 1896] 

MEN frequently abandon their property 
when they no longer have use for it, and 
imagine they are very benevolent. So when a 
man finds his life a wreck he is apt to say he will 
live for others. Yet one can give to others only 
what one's life is worth to oneself. 

To abandon a mean situation is not the path 
to a better one. Only when we are faithful to the 
little duty are we worthy to meet a larger one. 
It is often necessary to leave a situation that 
offers small chance for the realization of our 
lives, but it makes all the difference in the world 
whether we sneak meanly out from under the 
little duty or climb bravely through and over the 
top. 



106 



SCHOLARSHIP 



[December 14, 1898] 

IN MODERN scientific work entirely too 
much is made of developing and trading 
upon every fragment of knowledge one attains. 
Such a method gives notoriety to the workers, 
but only multipUes the mass of books full of 
dead material. One should seek to make each 
fragment yield its fullest measure of life to one's 
spirit, but should give out the refined and organ- 
ized result. Fewer books of higher quality is 
the need in literature to-day. The idea of a 
struggle for existence has led us to accept the 
fact that the great mass of books will be sifted 
by time, and only the worthy will survive. This 
is true, but if a larger measure of the sifting 
could be accomplished within the spirit of the 
author himself the result would be better for 
him and for his readers. 



107 



The Moan of the Pine in the Forest 

THE flowers are faded, the leaves are dead, 
Over the meadows a gloom is spread, 
And the pine-tree moans in the forest. 

The night draws down, I am growing old. 
In the evening wind I feel the cold. 
While the pine-tree moans in the forest. 

My eyes are seared and I cannot weep, 
Forever it haunts me awake or asleep — 
The moan of the pine in the forest. 

I seem to see a shape pass by, 

I seem to hear a dying sigh 

In the moan of the pine in the forest. 

O God! that terrible human cry! 
It will haunt me forever until I die 
In the moan of the pine in the forest. 

Her face was fair and her soul was white, 
And I — I came as the gloom of night — 
Ah, the moan of the pine in the forest ! 

How sweet you were with your love divine. 
How close your dear breast pressed to mine — 
But ah — the moaning cry of the pine — 
Of the sobbing pine in the forest I 

1 08 



THE MOAN OF THE PINE IN THE FOREST 

I am withered and bent and old, 

And your sweet breast has long been cold 

'Neath the moaning pines of the forest. 

Ah God ! that a soul cannot forget ! 
The long-dead past must haunt me yet, 
As the moan of the pine in the forest. 

The stars are hid in the blackened sky, 

Heaven ! Hell ! can I never die 
And forget the moan of the forest? 

The bitter night-winds sting my cheek, 
The pine-tree's moan becomes a shriek — 
The shriek of the pines in the forest. 

1 hear above the forest's roar 

A cry — " I am lost forevermore ! " — 
Ah, the moan of the pines in the forest ! 

The voice is lost in the storm-winds' roar, 
My heart but echoes — " forevermore 
Lost, lost in the moan of the forest ! " 

The howling storm-winds swiftly fly, 
The clouds are whirled in the darkened sky. 
While the mournful pine-tree moans its cry — 
The sobbing cry of the forest ! 

109 



LIFE 

[On the train, February i6, 1900] 

€^T IFE is an unstable equilibrium." Men 
L^ like Wordsworth and Klopstock tend to 
overemphasize the equilibrium, and life becomes 
stable and prosaic. Men like Shelley and Heine 
exaggerate the unstable quality, and the equilib- 
rium is apt to be lost. This explains why the 
virtues of sobriety, prudence, regularity are so 
often associated with a prosaic and common- 
place type of character, while the irregular but 
awakened life is so attractive. Men have always 
liked Carmen, and women are seldom satisfied 
with men who are *' thoroughly respectable." 
Doubtless one could depend on Wordsworth's 
coming home to dinner if he promised to do so, 
but the worst of it is one would not care so 
much whether he came or not. Shelley would 
be quite unreliable, but it would be the heaven 
of the unexpected when he came. 



no 



T 



ART 

[Rome, December 18, 1898] 

HE decline of Roman sculpture shows the 
same tendency which comes early in the 
history of art — the effort to achieve greatness 
by the use of abnormal size. The colossal 
statues of emperors and gods, like the massive 
sculptures of the Egyptians and Assyrians, show 
the mistaken notion that a wanting majesty can 
be imparted by mere bigness. Yet while the 
more primitive works have a certain grandeur 
through earnest intention, the huge creations 
of decadent Rome are merely big and their size 
but exaggerates their lack of significance. 

It is true, increased size, within strict limits, 
may add to majesty of impression, as an added 
wealth of lighting exalts the paintings of Rem- 
brandt and Titian. But these tricks of skill are 
always dangerous, and the power of artistic con- 
ception and execution must be unusually great 
to carry them successfully. As Titian and Rem- 
brandt were great enough to handle unusual 
lighting effectively, so Michael Angelo had suffi- 
cient masculine power to use the device of in- 
creased size to give to his statues a greater 
majesty. But Bernini and his followers only 
caricatured their mediocrity on a large scale 
when they tried to make vacant marbles impres- 
sive by multiplying their size. 



Ill 



"Of Such Is the Kingdom of Heaven" 

I STOPPED a moment on Piccadilly near the 
corner of Hyde Park. It was dusk, and the 
street was beginning to be filled with the people 
who crowd it at night. I was wearied with 
human life ; this West End thoroughfare 
seemed more distressing than Whitechapel. 
There, was misery, but here the surging crowd 
of shameless women and hardened men spoke of 
the brutality of habitual vice. The ceaseless 
rush of the city life hardens the sympathies of 
the most sensitive ; rest comes only when the 
heart grows callous. I longed to escape from 
men, for I felt as if there were nothing to re- 
deem humanity. 

Near me I noticed two little boys, one perhaps 
ten, the other twelve years old. The little one's 
face was ghastly white, and his teeth were 
chattering. '* Can't you walk any more, John- 
nie? " said the older one. '' No," sobbed John- 
nie. The older boy had a coarse face, one that 
showed a bad inheritance behind it. But now 
he looked sad and perplexed. " Well," he said, 
** I'll try to carry you." He was not much 
larger than the younger lad, but he lifted the 
little form up tenderly in his arms, and stag- 
gered down the street. I followed and asked 

112 



"OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN'' 

what was the matter. " 'E fell into the Serpen- 
tine." '* Here, take this, and take him home in 
the 'bus," I said. His face brightened. An 
omnibus was just passing, and he cried " hi " 
in a commanding voice. The big wagon 
stopped and with infinite tenderness he carried 
his burden up the steps and into it, and sat 
down with the limp little body in his lap. The 
last I saw as the 'bus bowled away was the little 
white hand and ragged sleeve of the younger boy 
around his protector's neck, and in the older 
boy's face that look of lovingly tender mother- 
hood that some painters have been able to 
express in the Madonna's face. I walked on, 
threading my way mechanically through the 
crowd. I did not see the hideous street with its 
painted women and brutal men. I saw only the 
little ragged sleeve and the sweet mother look ; 
and I thought about an old story of how God 
was born into the world as a little child. 



113 



A Life 

THE strength of gentleness, the might of 
meekness, 
The glory of a courage unafraid, 
A constant love, a tenderness for weakness, 
Were in her face and in her life displayed. 



714 



LONDON 



[London, August 7, 1898] 

THE debris of life in London is terrible. On 
the benches in the little squares sit 
wretched hags ever half-sleeping with drunken- 
ness and weariness. In and out of the dram- 
shops stagger men and women in all stages of 
heavy and coarse degeneration. The parks near 
the city's center are covered with men lying 
about in all attitudes of physical exhaustion — 
immense battle-fields they seem, filled with 
corpses of those who have gone down in the 
struggle for existence. The alleys swarm with 
ill-developed children whose white faces can 
be discerned beneath the excessive dirt. The 
immense mass of human wreckage makes the 
problem seem hopeless. One feels as if one 
were in the presence of an immense vortex in 
which lives are ceaselessly going down while one 
is powerless to help. I have continuously in 
London the feeling that was intensified to-night 
by an accident. From the top of an omnibus I 
saw a horse attached to a hansom come gallop- 
ing down the slippery pavement wet with the 
evening fog. The driver's face had upon it a 
look, half of despairing courage, half of ghastly 
terror at the almost certain fate. The runaway 
passed us, and a little beyond the wheel struck 
violently upon the heavy back wheel of an omni- 
bus. The hansom shuddered and then collapsed, 

IIS 



LONDON 



the horse tearing himself free from the debris, 
while the driver was thrown violently through 
the air and upon the stone sidew^alk ! 



n6 



One Mood of the City 

THE stream of human Hfe, a ceaseless tide, 
Through streets and alleys of the city 
flows : 
Fair joyous faces brightly shine beside 
Those whose wan features tell of hopeless woes ; 
Men who their deeds of sin full fain would hide, 
And children whose soft cheeks bloom hke the 

rose: 
Ah, who shall tell the wonder and the pity 
Of human life that surges through the city ! 

The city morning dawneth wan and gray. 

The very air is heavy with the smell 

Of all the rotten vices, seeming gay, 

But black at heart, which make the night a hell ; 

The throng of workers filleth every way 

As these haste on to where they buy and sell, — 

Who gazes on the vain, depressing sight, 

Must wonder whether day is worse than night. 

The gamblers gather by the Stock Exchange, 
The cars and wagons fill the streets with din, 
Through lanes and by-ways foreign pedlers 

range ; 
Children who seek their way to school begin 
To add a merriment appearing strange 

117 



ONE MOOD OF THE CITY 



In all the swarm of madness and of sin ; 
The idle loafers on the corners stand, 
The dram-shops gather in their daily band. 

At noon begins again the dreary round 

Of those who seek the cook-shops good or ill ; 

From steaming, dirty kitchens underground 

The sickening smells arise that quickly fill 

The streets above. The uninviting sound 

Of clattering dishes fills the air until 

Its hunger satisfied, to work or play 

The hurrying crowd returns till close of day. 

The throng increases with the afternoon. 
But changes as the women seek the street 
To look or buy. Shop-girls denied the boon 
Of rest, with weary eyes and aching feet 
Display the wares. The heavy air is soon 
Ofifensive with cheap perfume and the heat 
Of human bodies ; while without, the throng 
Of gazing idlers slowly moves along. 

The afternoon has faded, and the glow 
Of sunset climbs aloft the western sky ; 
The people in the streets, no longer slow, 
Haste homeward gladly now that night is nigh. 
The sunset's beauty and the homeward flow 
Are less oppressive, and a half-heard sigh 
Seems lightly breathed, because of sweet release 
That promises the night and rest and peace. 

ii8 



ONE MOOD OF THE CITY 



The night has come, and from the silent bay 
I see the myriad Hghts chmb up the hill ; 
The ferry quietly moves on its way 
Beneath God's stars which shine so far and still. 
The city's peace is different from the day 
Which garish light and troubled noises fill ; 
The buildings rising dimly outlined seem 
The fair and peaceful city of a dream. 

The night, the night has come, and with the 

night 
The throng that filled the streets has sought its 

home; 
The night, the night is here, and light on light 
Seems soaring up to reach the heaven's dome ; 
A different throng of other aspect quite 
Begins now through the lighted streets to roam ; 
The victims who in turn on error prey 
Give night a meaning darker than the day. 

The gaudy theatres attract their crowd, 
Saloons and gambhng dens are quickly filled ; 
Coarse, painted women speak in accents loud,— 
The voice of vice at night is never stilled, — 
Belated girls from work-shops hasten cowed. 
As if escape from harm were what they willed ; 
Beneath the sidewalk In each filthy den, 
What once were women dance to wrecks of men. 

119 



ONE MOOD OF THE CITY 



O, all the agony and shame and woe 
Up-gathered in a city's streets at night ! 
Ah, how the stream of life through ebb and flow 
Sweeps on to every form of human blight ! 
The stars of God that seemed to rest us so 
Are shut in outer darkness by the light 
That flares down on the life which fills the city 
With what we love or loathe, but ever pity. 



130 



HUMANITY 



[Paris, December 28, 1898] 

OUT upon the night-wind it is born, faint, 
tremulous, rising into a deep swell of 
sound, shaking the fabric of the earth and reach- 
ing aloft to heaven — the sigh of suffering 
humanity. It shakes the throne of the despot, 
and weakens the foundations upon which Pride 
and Selfishness have built their seemingly 
eternal palaces. It rings in the ears of the 
dreamer and makes tremulous the heart of every 
lover of his fellowmen. More powerful than the 
wind that lashes the sea, more lasting than the 
ceaseless hum of toil, pitiable, insistent, menac- 
ing, it shall not go unheard and unanswered. 
The ear of God listens, the forces of the universe 
wait to leap into being to answer its need. Those 
who cause it shall be swept into ruin, and those 
who listen and seek to help shall attain a power 
no tyrant ever dreamed. 



121 



CONSTANTINOPLE 



[Constantinople, October, 1901] 

HOW to express this da}r ! I am bewildered 
wdth a multitude of new impressions — 
more stirring and more confusing than I had 
expected. I was aware that I should have the 
double interest of two worlds both new to me — 
the oriental world of the Turkish life, and the 
majestic and dazzling Byzantine empire, but I 
did not expect the ancient world to be so much 
above ground as it is. It is true the fragments 
are but rare rocks projecting above the floods of 
centuries, yet these are sufhcient to waken the 
imagination to some reconstruction of the past. 
The Hippodrome with its three columns, mute 
memorials of such grandeur past, still wakens 
a memory of the frantic crowd that gathered in 
passionate enthusiasm to witness the races. The 
Serpent Column — mutilated and based far be- 
low the present level of the soil — is it the col- 
umn of Delphi that bore the sacred tripod of 
Apollo? How it is associated with that far 
away world of young Greece and the Persian 
wars ! And this Obelisk from Egypt with its 
marble bases representing scenes from the life 
of the Hipprodrome, and the Colossus, wanting 
its bronze plates, but standing a mute signal 
of gone ages : how they move the imagination 
and call up a dead world ! The Bronze Horses 
Theodosius took from Scio, or some other 

122 



CONSTANTINOPLE 



Greek city, the Venetians stole from Constan- 
tinople and carried away to decorate their 
church of San Marco ; and Napoleon, repeat- 
ing the robbery of past conquerors, carried 
them to Paris, where they would have remained 
had not modern sentiment become less tolerant 
of brilliant crimes. But above all, Santa Sophia 
recalls the grand days. Built by the conqueror 
of Theodoric's kingdom, it suggests strongly 
Ravenna's court church, San Vitale, but with 
more space and majesty though less bewilder- 
ment of architectural beauty in its interior. 
Yes, I think I can say that Santa Sophia, the 
church of Holy Wisdom — barring its Moham- 
medan disfigurements — is perfectly satisfying in 
its interior. Every Hne is in harmony with every 
other. The richness of Byzantine decoration — 
flowering capitals, exquisite lace work in marble, 
warm gold mosaics, a wealth of many-colored 
marbles — is in harmony with the plan and spirit 
of the whole. That the eastern empire could 
give birth to such a church is alone a sufficient 
evidence that it was not all decadence — were 
evidence wanting of that fact. 

But all this is of the past world, and over it 
rides the present like a vast, rolling sea. The 
worshippers in Santa Sophia kneel toward the 
corner of the church looking to holy Mecca. 
The streets are thronged with strange crowds — 

123 



CONSTANTINOPLE 



veiled ladies, dark faces under red caps, bare- 
footed children of oriental look. Over the nar- 
row alleys of the old town lean latticed win- 
dows protecting the inmates of the houses from 
the passer's gaze, but allowing them to watch 
the streets. Everywhere rise the Mohamme- i 
dan domes and the light fingers of the minarets. 
Strange cries come from the sellers of strange 
wares. A multitude of scurvy dogs fills the 
street. The dirt and smell of the orient are 
everywhere. 

And about all is the blue sea, flowing into the 
broad mouth of the Golden Horn, washing 
between Galata and Stamboul, throbbing be- 
tween the near shores of Europe and Asia, 
spreading into the blue vast at either side : a 
strange, new, wonderful world, beating in upon 
the imagination with a multitude of impressions 
revealing new aspects of an old humanity . 

A SECOND day of superb weather and rich, 
new experience. I began it by climb- 
ing Galata's tower. The view was unrivalled. 
On the east swept the coast of Asia away and 
away, with blue mountains toward the south, 
while between lay the soft blue marble sea. Con- 
stantinople rose on its seven hills, mosque 
beyond mosque breaking the line of buildings 
with its cluster of domes and minarets. From 

124 



CONSTANTINOPLE 



east to west between the central hills swept the 
vineclad arches of the Aqueduct of Valens. In 
the center of Stamboul rose the Seraskerat with 
its tower. To the west were gray hills with 
dark sweeping groves of cypresses here and 
there, while in the central foreground wound the 
blue length of the Golden Horn. For variety 
of interest, natural, historical, artistic, no view 
I have enjoyed equals this. 

IT SEEMED strange to go to a world where 
the religion was everywhere Roman Catholic 
with its stately ceremonials : it seems far 
stranger to come to this world where the 
religion is non-christian and the occasional for- 
eign intruder into the mosque is tolerated with 
scornful contempt. Yet how much is the same 
in all religions that have become conventional- 
ized institutions. The droning of the prayers, 
the bowing to Mecca, the gesticulations of the 
worshipers, were different in detail from the 
ritual in other worships ; yet how much the same 
after all, and may we not say that the unconven- 
tionalized heart of all religions is also every- 
where one ? 

THE Grande Rue de Pera — there indeed 
is the conglomeration of all nations. 
Crowded always, from five to seven it is almost 

125 



CONSTANTINOPLE 



impassable, and with all kinds and races of 
people. There seems to be no depth in this 
Constantinople life, no rooting to the soil. Even 
the Turk is a stranger within the gates of the 
city, and all other nations are still more so. One 
can only lament the great days before the filibus- 
tering expedition of the Latins and the subse- 
quent conquests of the Turks. Still is there not 
something artificial in the very nature of the 
city? Constantine called the nations here by his 
bribes and from that time on, Constantinople has 
been the city of every one and of no one. The 
meeting place of Europe and Asia, the mistress 
of the most princely situation in the world, she 
has been the desired of all races, ravished and 
held for a time by many, the true bride of none. 
Never the original seat of a world-mastering 
people, like Rome, never the source of a re- 
birth of art and science, like Athens or Flor- 
ence, she has produced little but has been the 
theater of how much that is significant in the 
history of mankind ! 

THE " Seven Towers " were peculiarly Im- 
pressive. The ruinous condition of towers 
and walls told mutely of the happy fact that the 
cruelties and crimes for which the structure 
stood belong to the past. Yet one could vividly 
call them to mind as one looked from a tower 

126 



THE WALLS 



across the ruin and over the blue Sea of Mar- 
mora. The associations of the Tower of Lon- 
don seem faint beside the romantic horrors for 
which these seven relics of Mohammedan 
cruelty stand. 

But the great experience of the day was the 
walk along the outside of the land walls. 
Nowhere else have I gained so clear an idea of 
the extent, power and meaning of ancient and 
mediaeval fortifications. And equally great was 
the impression of ruin — of the never-to-return 
civilization of the past — which these walls gave. 
How storm after storm of human life shattered 
itself upon them, until finally a storm came 
which shattered them and left them as they are 
to-day ! 

Beside the walls for four miles extended the 
Turkish cemetery. Dark cypresses murmured 
in multitudes about the countless graves. Many 
of the head-stones were leaning or fallen. The 
turbans at the top of the stones for men gave a 
queer impression. One realizes the extent of 
Mohammedan life here from these vast acres of 
the dead. 

THE Mohammedan Sunday: and all the 
morning were strange sights, while the 
crowd seemed a little better dressed than usual. 
The heart of my day was a trip to Scutari. En- 

127 



SCUTARI 

tirely oriental the town seemed with its main 
streets thronged with buyers and sellers and its 
side streets silent as the grave. There is some- 
thing ominous in the row upon row of houses, 
with their lattice-work windows and never a face 
visible. An occasional cough or laugh breaks 
the stillness, but only with a startling evidence 
of life behind these screened walls. 

Quite by accident I found my way into 
the vast cemetery at Scutari. The road reached 
away indefinitely: on either side stretched a 
seemingly limitless forest of cypresses, with a 
maze of darkened tomb-stones underneath in 
every posture of disarray. Silent, dark, weird 
seemed these far-reaching graves of the dead, 
yet only a little more silent and weird than the 
streets of the oriental town. And all through- 
out it graves were scattered. Frequently a 
house was set twenty feet back from the street 
and in front were placed from two to a dozen 
graves : living and dead mixed together in quite 
heterogeneous fashion. And this was true even 
a few paces away from the principal street with 
its throng of chaffering people. 

But returning was the crown of the day and 
perhaps of the trip. It was the sunset time and 
the whole heaven was aglow with golden light. 
The clouds — light fleeces a moment before — 
were darkened with rosy light. Far up the Bos- 

128 



CONSTANTINOPLE 



porus rose the Castle of Europe, Scutari 
gleamed with warm color, while over Stamboui 
rested an abyss of gold as the sun went down. 
Clearly outlined against the heaven were Galata 
and Pera with the noble tower. Beautiful, incon- 
ceivably beautiful, was the city of the cross ana 
crescent; without the awful majesty of Rome, 
without the human charm of Florence, without 
the odalisk beauty of Venice sleeping upon her 
Adriatic couch, yet all-powerful over the imag- 
ination ; the city of wild, weird romance, of 
strange destiny, the city of every one and no one, 
where Occident and Orient are both at home, 
yet neither can say, '' she is mine." 

[on board ship] 

ALIGHT mist, rapidly clearing, rests over 
Stam.boul ; Galata and Pera are clear in the 
sunshine. The harbor is full of boats little and 
great and of busy sea life. From where my 
ship lies the city encircles me like the crescent 
that has been its device since the old empire 
days. Within a few rods of me lie Greek, Ru- 
manian, Italian, English, Russian, Austrian, 
Turkish vessels. Across, the Seraglio domes 
gloom among the trees — cypress and others. 
Santa Sophia is touched with golden light, and 
one by one the farther mosques are shining free 
from the denser air. The bridge is like a dis- 

129 



CONS TA N TINOPLE 



tant theatre, with an endless stream of puppets 
moving in both directions. Galata's tower, in 
form and color, suggests the Genoese and Italy. 
All about is the quivering surface of the blue 
water. Adieu, Byzantium, City of the Greek 
colonists of so long ago! Adieu, Constanti- 
nople, new Rome of the first Christian emperor, 
beautiful and imperial City of the long line of 
monarchs who ruled wuth power and glory when 
Rome was all but an abandoned waste, and that 
withstood unconquered so long assaults from 
north and east and west ! Adieu, Stamboul, 
object first of awe and envy to the Mohamme- 
dan, and then ravished by his cruel power ! 
Adieu, cosmopolitan City of glory and decay, 
scene of the slow fading of the Turkish might, 
taken quietly but firmly more and more by the 
nations of the west! Adieu, City of glorious 
beauty and of wild, romantic past, hom.e of 
every one and of no one, envied by all, possessed 
of many, the permanent bride of none ! Adieu, 
sad and glorious City, and when the mosaics of 
Santa Sophia appear beneath the colors put on 
by Mohammedan hands, when the crescent is 
again united with the cross, when the fading 
empire of the Turk sinks into the night v/hose 
gathering twilight glooms, may your unguessed 
destiny be happier than in the romantic days 
that are behind ; may you be as glad as you are 
beautiful and as free as you are proud! 

130 



TEACHING 



[Berlin, December 4, 1894] 

THE important thing for any teacher is to 
know and state the truth. The faculty of 
arguing can be appHed to false premises as well 
as to true ones. Many a false view has been 
logically ** established." We grow in knowledge 
of truth not so much by processes of argument 
as by coming to see what is. Indeed the most 
powerful of all possible arguments is a clear, 
affirmative statement of a fact. In the end truth 
conquers and the most skilfully constructed the- 
ories will disappear if they fail to correspond with 
reality. It is better to widen a little the horizon 
than to construct a skillful argument ; it is better 
to see a little farther into the truth than to over- 
throw some false theory. As the highest end in 
knowledge is that wisdom which simply recog- 
nizes the truth in any concrete situation, so the 
greatest power in a teacher lies in struggling up 
towards such wisdom and giving what he finds. 
Others may not recognize it at once, but he can 
afford to wait. What he has found will in the 
end appeal. He can well afford to wait, for 
truth alone is safe. 



131 



They Shine So Still 

[Translated from the German of Heine] 

THEY shine so still, so steadfast, 
The stars in heaven above, 
A thousand years, and each gazes 
On each in the pain of love. 

They speak a speech so lovely, 
So rich; but of all the band 

Of Philology's learned students 
This speech can none understand. 

But I have mastered the language. 
And shall not forget it soon ; 

In place of a grammar serves me 
The face of my heart's dearest one. 



132 



LOVE 

[Paris, December 28, 1898] 

LOVE is the everlasting worker of miracles. 
When all seems hopeless, and the soul is 
descending upon the road that has no turning, 
let it be awakened to love, and immediately all 
the forces of the spiritual world converge upon 
it to lift it toward God. Love is the savior, 
love is the perpetual wonder of life. 



133 



MAN 

[At sea, January 19, iSgg] 

WHAT a variety of worlds touches us daily ! 
I thought this morning how each of the 
blue-shirted sailors who assisted in loading the 
freight was the center of a world as all-impor- 
tant to him as any other's world can be to that 
other. The porters on the quay, the cab-drivers, 
the ship stewards all have their independent 
spheres of life, yet inextricably interwoven. The 
smug first-class passenger has a comfortable 
contempt for what he regards as the human 
cattle of the steerage, and accepts the innum- 
erable attentions offered by the various em- 
ployees, forgetting that these, too, are human 
beings. In every place is a multitude of worlds 
impinging upon one another and overlapping 
in a maze of relations, yet each stretching out 
for the individual who is the center into an al- 
most terrible isolation. 

The great ship gathers together its few hun- 
dred individuals, holds them in external contact 
for a week, and then releases them to the four 
quarters of the earth. Never twice does the 
same combination occur. Each voyage is the 
temporary creation of a unique world, destroyed 
as quickly as it was born. It is as real while 
it lasts as it is unrecallable when once it is 
dissolved. 



134 



THE GREAT REALITIES 



[At sea, January, 1899] 

TO HAVE too little money may strengthen 
character through the struggles it necessi- 
tates, but it is in danger of developing a selfish- 
ness in little things. To watch some of the 
second-class passengers eat is to look on at a 
very literal struggle for existence. The vulgar 
calculation on the number of steaks it is possi- 
ble for one to get is as bad as the unrestrained 
gluttony in the first cabin, and illustrates the 
slavery to things that may come from having too 
little of them as well as from having too much. 
To live constantly in the presence of the great 
interests of life — that is the problem, whether 
one is rich or poor; and it is a problem which 
can be solved only by constant effort and watch- 
fulness. 

We speak often of coming back to the great 
realities of existence : it is the need of life, but 
only if it be the great reaHties to which we 
return and not merely the vulgar ones. Love 
and thought and religion are great realities, but 
eating and sleeping and herding are quite as 
fundamental. Thus in advocating a return to 
nature it is always important to make very clear 
what nature it is to which we urge a return. The 
indiscriminate praising of every natural func- 
tion simply because it is natural leads to a 
confusion of .those distinctions of high and low 

135 



MAN AND NATURE 



which form one of the most subtle products of 
spiritual evolution. 

THE well-informed Englishman discourses 
dogmatically on the British nation and 
other universal questions. The garrulous 
American alternates between unlimited boasting 
over America and a pessimism that almost 
gloats in the unparalleled corruption of her poli- 
tics. A shrewd-faced German sits by, risking a 
half-ironical remark now and then, while a satir- 
ical smile lights up his features at some more 
questionable Anglo-Saxon boast. It is he who 
is learning from the discussion. 

HOW wearisome grows the ceaseless move- 
ment of the ship, the smell of the cooking, 
the noise of the people ! Yet the sunrise this 
morning was again a revelation of the fresh 
vigor of nature, unwearied with all the endless 
spawn of life she has produced and is ever pro- 
ducing. Across the dark waves, against the 
low-lying clouds, was a flame of light like a ship 
on fire. Above, the heaven was serene. All 
around the circle of the horizon the band of 
cloud became rosy with the new light. The bit- 
ing breath of winter stung one's cheek. A touch 
of frost blew upon the deck. Hard, forbidding, 
beautiful, it was Nature, pitiless, conscienceless, 
but how alive ! 

136 



NEEDLESS FAILURE 



[Rome, December 17, 1898] 

IN THE Stir and hurry of life how careless we 
are of little courtesies ! We rudely brush 
aside love that yearns to bless us. Unthink- 
ingly we wound hearts whose joy or sorrow 
hangs upon our slightest act or word. Pride or 
carelessness checks the spontaneous expression 
of our love. We crush and cast aside the flower 
of life's mystery, and then bemoan the mo- 
notony of existence. O to be awake every 
moment to the wonder and majesty of it all! 



137 



MODERN ART 



[Paris, December 28, 1898] 

IT IS not only a greater depth and content 
that shows in modern art : the sculptures and 
paintings of the Luxembourg fill me with an 
intense feeling of sadness. How often despair is 
repeated among the motives ! From Cain, deso- 
late, sweeping across the bitter desert of life, to 
the Eve Repentant, or the Kiss of the Grand- 
mother on the brow of the child, the impression 
of the pitiless tragedy of existence was reiter- 
ated again and again. 

There was no such spirit in the Renaissance. 
In the art of that period one finds beauty, joy, 
sensuousness, religion ; but never the intense 
modern humanity and never the utter pathos and 
tragedy. So with ancient art ; though it may 
rise to the gravity of the Niobe group or the 
Laokoon there is nowhere the modern tragedy. 

Is this infinite sadness of dead yesterdays and 
broken dreams a peculiar quality of French art 
or is it a characteristic of the modern spirit gen- 
erally ? One is inclined to feel that it is but the 
necessary counterpart of the frequent abandon- 
ment to sensuality, the absence of sincerity and 
consecration which show in French life. There 
is in Paris a vital lack of faith, and without faith 
the noblest beauty can but generate sadness. 
For the sense of its transitory character, the 
vain hunger for permanence, make its evanes- 

138 



MODERN ART 



cent presence a source of pain. The statues that 
represent peace choose usually some moment of 
respite from the restless pain of consciousness, 
while those that present life in action are preg- 
nant with positive tragedy. 

There must be some answer to all this, some 
explanation of the strange enigma of life, some 
power to transform its bitterness into the divine. 
The modern world is not a child ; it faces the 
hard problems of adult life. The Renaissance 
woke like a baby to the beauty of the morning. 
It was less self-conscious, and was satisfied with 
a more simple acceptance of life than are we. 
This is one reason for the endless charm it has 
for us. With the fuller power of conscious man- 
hood we must pay the price of losing the naive 
joy of life which marks the period of childhood. 



139 



SCHOLARSHIP 



[London, August n, 189S] 

WHEN scholarship is carried on by a 
protected class it tends to lose all relation 
to reality. It degenerates into a useless game of 
shuttle-cock, where the worn topic is tossed back 
and forth among the players. It becomes a self- 
feeding process. A man who touches life writes 
something ; men one remove from reality seri- 
ously consider his work, but with little grasp of 
its human significance ; then others, scholastics, 
consider the commentaries of the second class, 
and so the process goes on, until some true man 
comes again and ignores the maunderings of the 
scholastics or brushes them aside, and deals 
anew with reality. If the useless and aimless 
stufif could but be swept away and only such 
literature be produced as deals directly with life 
what an immense saving of life and power there 
would be ! 



140 



Youth 

THE footlights flared dismally, and the 
painted woman on the stage sang a song 
that was intended to be merry, but w^as really 
burlesque misery. The little girl sat in the or- 
chestra fauteuils — they were only a franc in this 
cheap playhouse. She tried to look as if she en- 
joyed the show, but it was a dismal effort. She 
had to sit there, it was her trade. She was 
not hardened yet, she was only sixteen, and her 
face had a sweet, childish freshness about it ; yet 
she sat there waiting to make some engagement 
for the night. Her thoughts wandered very far 
from the coarse songs of the stage. She seemed 
to see a child that was she and yet not she, a 
little child that toiled with its mother in the field 
sowing the grain. She saw the child go into the 
rude hut, she saw the mother kiss it good night, 
she could feel the child's quiet slumber, she 
dreamed the child's dream. Poor little girl ! 
Only sixteen, and not hardened with the dull 
insensibility that is the merciful punishment of 
sin. How she longed for just a little love ! She 
would have given her life freely and gladly to any 
one who would love her just a little. But nobody 
loved her. The men who sought her company 
could not love ; they had murdered that possibil- 

141 



YOUTH 

ity in themselves long ago, and they were help- 
ing her to murder hers. 

Poor little girl! Caught in the toils from 
which there is no escape. There is only one 
path, and that steadily down. You will tread it 
like others. You will welcome the punishment 
that inevitably comes, — the insensibility to all 
feeling. But to-night you are so tired, so dis- 
gusted with it all; yet there is the rent to be 
paid to-morrow, and the new dress you must 
have. Best be at your business, for it is getting 
late. Poor little girl ! A few more glasses of 
the blinding drink, and you will not mind. Poor 
little girl ! 



142 



FRANCE 

{.Paris, December 26, 1898] 

IN PARIS one's feelings alternate between 
love and detestation. There is so much that 
is admirable and beautiful in Paris, and so much 
that is despicable. The gayety of the people 
makes it possible for them to carry oH every- 
thing, even their vices, v^ith a certain air of 
mastery and joy. Yet there is so much that is 
heartless, cruel, superficial, v^icked in Paris. 

Nothing great can come without entire sin- 
cerity of purpose and of life. Given this, and one 
may pass through the fire of mistakes and yet 
grow on into life ; but without earnestness life 
means nothing. It is the lack of earnestness that 
is degrading modern French life. It shows in 
the quick spasm of irresponsible passion, in the 
cruel selfishness revealed in a crisis, in the idle 
curiosity and easy abandonment to cheap dissi- 
pation. It is a Savonarola these French people 
need, even more than the fickle Florentines 
needed him in the old da3^s. 

The value of skill depends upon character. A 
special power is good or evil as is the man who 
uses it. Greatness must rest upon goodness or 
it is an unloosed storm, as destructive as it is 
awe-inspiring. This truth must be the founda- 
tion of all popular education and must be reiter- 
ated again and again. 

Yet goodness must never be confounded with 

143 



POSITIVE MORALITY 



negative morality. Great errors may be present 
in a profoundly good life, and a spotless reputa- 
tion may cover a meaningless existence v^ith no 
positive expression of the good. The world has 
been right in forgiving much to men of genius, 
for their great mistakes are but the corollary oi 
their original and positive force of life. To push 
out into untried fields is the peculiar service of 
genius, and this involves many mistakes. But if 
the fundamental purpose is deeply earnest, the 
errors are instructive, like all sincere but unsuc- 
cessful experiments, and the failure may after all 
be a step in the forward process of Hfe. 



144 



TldvTa yicopel 

I STOOD on the rocks at night on the shore 
of the vast western ocean, 
Afar on the sea some storm had stirred into 

being the billows ; 
The great sea heaved and rolled, its thunder- 
ous voice re-echoed. 
As it cried its terrible cry, the wail of the dream 
of existence. 

No moonlight lessened the gloom, the brooding 
blackness about me, 

Blackness unbroken by light, save the light of 
the foaming billows, 

As afar on the sea a line seemed black on the 
darkness behind it. 

And steadily nearer came till it burst into light 
for a moment, 

Then dashed out its life on the rocks and sigh- 
ingly sank in the ocean. 

Each wave shrieked its terrible cry as it rose to 

the height of its being, 
Only to fall again and lose its existence forever; 
Only a moment of life, of Hght on the terrible 

blackness. 
Then to fall for aye in the meaningless vast of 

the ocean. 

145 



Hdvra ^(opel 

The breast of the great sea heaved, it seemed to 

throb with emotion ; 
Yet cruel and cold and dead it mocks the cry of 

the human ; 
Restlessly moving forever, its breast bears lives 

into being. 
Only to crush them out as the leaves crumble 
back into dust. 

I hear still the voice of the sea on the rocks by 
the vast western ocean ; 

The waves shriek their terrible cry as they break 
and sink back in the blackness ; 

The restless sea still bears on its breast the im- 
petuous billows, 

E^ch is born into light, each loses its being for- 
ever. 

No pause, no rest, no peace in the ceaseless sea 
of existence ; 

Last year's leaves are dust, while the flowers of 
springtime are blooming, 

I hear still the roar of the sea on the rocks by 
the vast western ocean, 

The waves shriek their terrible cry as they break 
and are lost in the darkness, 

The restless sea still bears on its breast the im- 
petuous billows, 

Each has it moment of light, each is lost in the 
darkness forever. 

146 



PIERRE LOT I 



[November 12, 1897] 

PIERRE LOTI is a marvelous stylist, and 
the delicac)^ of his feelings, the fine sym- 
pathy with which he can interpret widely differ- 
ent forms of Hfe are as remarkable as his subtle 
mastery of the vehicle of the French language. 
I am made to wonder, however, whether he is 
not one whose fullest promise remains unful- 
filled. Has he sold the spirit to the senses? Has 
he used the delicacy of his feelings as a mere 
opportunity for ever new sensations instead of 
making them a door to the appreciation of deep 
human things ? His Iceland Fisherman is full of 
the majesty of simple life, supremely human and 
strong in native genius. The heroine is one of 
the most noble characters in modern Hterature, 
and the tragic necessities of Hfe under the domi- 
nance of great natural forces are drawn with 
supreme power. The vague and majestic per- 
sonality of the ocean, alternating in mood from 
beautiful seductiveness to sombre malevolence, 
forms the artistic background upon which the 
Breton fisher life is painted. 

In the Marriage of Loti the heroine is also a 
richly endowed nature unspoiled by the artificial- 
ity of civilization, but while Gaud has all the 
inheritance of refined and exalted instincts which 
result from countless centuries of moral pro- 
gress, Rarahu only dimly approaches these 

147 



PIERRE LOT I 



through the transfiguration of her savage nature 
under the miracle of love. The fate in the Iceland 
Fisherman is the fate of hard and unyielding 
necessities in the struggle for existence ; the fate 
in the Marriage of Loti is the subjective abysm 
that separates the child of centuries of civiliza- 
tion from the savage. It is difficult to say which 
fate is the more tragic. As Gaud's capacity for 
suffering is higher and more delicate than 
Rarahu's, her tragedy is more powerfully mov- 
ing; but Rarahu is almost more pathetic, since 
her situation is so hopeless from the start. Per- 
haps the most tragic of all human relationships 
are those which involve intense union at one 
point and abysmal separation at all others. The 
impassible barriers are brought more fully into 
consciousness by the union which exists in one 
aspect. Such tragedies are possible only in 
sex-relations, because the physiological basis is 
simple and universal, while the higher union of 
love is so intimate and personal. 

Still I wonder sometimes whether Rarahu's 
tragedy was inevitable. Is it not the peculiar 
wonder of love that it can transfigure life, and 
given an intense union at one point, can bring 
an interweaving of one personality with another 
along even the most divergent lines ? Docs not 
Loti picture Rarahu as awakening through her 
love to a considerable measure of appreciation 



148 



PIERRE LOri 



of those instincts in her lover which were the 
result of the long ages of civilization behind 
him ? Therefore might she not, had he remained 
true to her, have given him a larger realization 
of life than was possible through his abandon- 
ment of her? 

[Palmpol, Brittany, September 8, 1898] 

OUR trip to the Breton peninsula has been 
a true literary pilgrimage. In following 
the experiences out of which Pierre Loti's Ice- 
land Fisherman was constructed I have been 
able to study in detail the creation of a work of 
art. This has been possible in a far more com- 
plete way than it would be with the Divine 
Comedy or Faust. Great masterpieces are con- 
structed on a w^de range of experience which is 
so transmuted through the soul of the author 
that it is often impossible to trace back to their 
exact sources the features of his artistic cre- 
ation. But the Iceland Fisherman is so simple, it 
reflects so immediately a special narrow range of 
experience still alive on the scene of the story, 
that it is possible to compare each phase of the 
work of art with the basis of life from which it 
sprang. The novel is wonderfully true to the 
Breton fisher-life : it is even exact in detail, 
yet it is no mere realistic transcript. The cre- 
ation of Gaud and Yann, the weaving together 

149 



PIERRE LOT I 



of the different phases of Hfe and focusing them, 
is ideaHstic work of a high order. And here 
the true significance of idealism is evident : 
it is not to present what exists only in the im- 
agination, but to interpret the soul of the true. 
Mere realism copies the body ; the higher union 
of realism and ideahsm, while presenting the 
body truly, reveals the soul. Loti has done this, 
bringing this life to consciousness and reveahng 
its deeper meaning. 

And with all its unique characteristics, how 
universally human this life is : the immediate 
relation to nature, the battle with the sea, the 
simple affirmation of human love, the most 
fundamental tragedy. The religion is almost a 
Norse dualism : on the one hand is the grim sea, 
like the Jotuns and the destructive mysterious 
powers of ice and snow and fire ; on the other 
the human will, which in its splendid affirmation 
must master the sea. Yet opposed to this simple 
Norse dualism is the refined product of cen- 
turies of Christianity — the sublime tenderness of 
Christ, the sweet motherhood of the Virgin, 
the lovable domesticity of Joseph — much wor- 
shiped here. They are the two eternal elements 
of the human spirit, the one the vocational battle 
with the world, the other the personal tenderness 
of love ; the one masculine, the other feminine ; 
the one a pagan affirmation of force and will and 

150 



PIERRE LOT! 



intelligence, the other a Christian expression of 
humility, piety and love. 

LOTI'S work is not of the positive cre- 
ative type of Shakespeare or Browning: his 
characters are less created from within than 
described from without. He is the artist of 
exquisite appreciation, presenting and trans- 
figuring his impressions in organic unity, but 
never taking up into his own soul the fund of 
human experience and creating it anew out of 
himself . 

This helps one to understand why the creator 
of the Iceland Fisherman could be also the 
writer of the Marriage of Loti and Madame 
Chrysantheme. A sensitive artistic nature not 
balanced by strong self-afiirmation may easily 
degenerate through giving itself over to the play 
of ever new sensations. The decadence which 
apparently took place in Oscar Wilde is the 
danger to a Loti. The demand of Faust that 

"All of life for all mankind created 
Shall be within mine inmost being tested " 

may be translated into two opposite paths of life. 
It may mean the highest demand of every 
awakened soul to become human, to gather up 
the positive experience of the race in oneself 
and pass from being an isolated fragment of 
humanity to becoming Man — the misrocosm, in 

151 



PIERRE LOT I 



which the whole is actively focused and which is 

forever growing toward the image of God. On 

the other hand it may mean giving oneself over 

to the chance play of capricious and novel 

sensations — 

" To drift with every passion till my soul 
Is a stringed lute on which all v/inds can play" — 

which means the utter disintegration of man- 
hood. There was much of both elements in 
Goethe's life. What saved him is expressed in 
that powerful entry in his diary : *' Ich will Herr 
werden ! " That affirmation of his will, that end- 
less struggle to become master of himself, cap- 
tain of his own soul, is what makes Goethe's 
work and life so powerfully constructive. 

This helps one to understand why the work of 
Leonardo and Michael Angelo thrills as that of 
Raphael never does. Raphael was exquisitely 
sensitive to impressions and rendered them 
easily on the canvas. That he did not degener- 
ate was partly due to the accident of circum- 
stances. He was held up by people who 
constantly demanded the best of him, and he died 
young. But Leonardo and Michael Angelo 
were masculine geniuses. Each was master of 
himself. They took up into themselves the 
experience they interpreted, and every work 
they created was a new birth out of the soul of 
the artist. 



152 



PIERRE LOT I 



With all its beauty and its union of realism 
and idealism, Loti's work belongs in the cate-' 
gory of artistically transfigured impressions,; 
and never in that of the higher creation. This 
explains at once its deHcacy and sensitiveness 
and its limitations, and helps one to understand 
the kind of degeneration of which Loti may 
have been capable. 



153 



The Over-Soul 

[1887] 

I AM the eternal giver of love, 
And I am the heart receiving; 
I am the mother heart above, 
And I am the child's soul breathing. 

I am the truth the heart believes, 
And I am the heart believing ; 

I am the exalted soul who sees. 
And I am the source of seeing. 

I am the unknown, knowing all. 
And I am the essence known ; 

I am the love in the thrush's call, 
And I am the sleep of the stone. 

I am the doer of all good. 

And I am the good that is done ; 

I am the spirit within the wood, 
And I am the light of the sun. 

I am the song the captive sings, 
And I am the prisoner chained ; 

I am the one who contains all things. 
And I am the all contained. 



154 



THE PERMANENT 



[Paris, October 31, 1898] 

HOW we hunger for the permanent, and how 
seldom we find it! Is our behef m it 
wrong? Are we mistaken to trust and hope as 
we do? Change, change, on every hand! The 
leaves fall and it is winter again. The spring 
comes and life begins anew. We are absorbed 
in the present, whether joyous or sorrowful, and 
the past quickly grows dim and unreal. Past 
sorrows are covered with a veil of atmosphere 
which gives them the beauty of a scarred moun- 
tain-side seen in the distance. Past joys soon 
become unreal, and seem faint like a half-remem- 
bered dream. Yet we cry out that love must 
last, that the soul is eternal ; we crave to see 
things " under the aspect of eternity ! " What 
does it mean ? What does it mean ? we cry : at 
times bewildered in the gray mist that makes all 
seem unreal and phantom-like, at times trusting 
in the sunlight of some fresh morning. 

There are moments when the figures near us 
seem least real, when the realities through 
which we have lived seem to be present with the 
soul, in an eternal now. Are these moments 
ghmpses into the absolute, or are they dreams 
and illusions that cheat the human spirit? 



ISS 



MOUNET-SULLY 



[Paris, October 28, 1898] 

I WAS greatly interested to find whether 
Mounet-Sully's CEdipus the King would 
produce the tremendous effect upon me it did 
four years ago. It was equally great. The 
whole impression is vastly above anything else 
I have ever heard. It was a fresh revelation of 
what dramatic art may mean. 

The play and the actor were singularly fitted 
to each other. The grave majesty of the Greek 
drama was no more lofty than the reserve power 
and dignified exaltation of passion in the actor. 
As before, Mounet-Sully revealed surprisingly 
the power of the French language in sonorous- 
ness, depth and vibrating earnestness. But this 
impressed me less than the power of the actor 
to master the emotion of his audience and sweep 
them with him on the breast of the action. 

And what acting ! The vibrating power of the 
voice, the dignified impressiveness of every ges- 
ture, the intense yet exalted and restrained 
expression of passion, the majesty or serenity 
that dominated, as in all the best Greek art, the 
expression of tense feeling — all surpassed any- 
thing I have ever seen. The whole impressed 
me as having a deeper content than most Greek 
art : was it because Mounet-Sully read a more 
profound range of emotions into the old Greek 



156 



(EDIPUS THE KING 



forms? If so he made them not less, but more 
human. 

From such a drama one can understand the 
Aristotehan theory of *' Katharsis," The 
method of this drama is the exact opposite of 
that usual in modern plays. In the latter the 
attempt is to impress by unexpected situations 
and denouements. But in the Greek drama the 
impression is made by the dramatic irony of the 
situation, consciousness of the inevitable out- 
come being present in the mind of the specta- 
tors from the start. There is a strange irony 
in the efforts CEdipus makes to bring about the 
very situation that must inevitably crush him 
with its utter tragedy. The effect is to put the 
observer above the plane of the dramatic action, 
to cause him to look down on the play of forces, 
not without pity, but with a feeling that he is 
above them. One is therefore left with a sense 
at once of the pitiless destiny that dominates 
life for those who are unconsciously in its con- 
trol, and at the same time, of the power of the 
intelligent will to master fate. While this effect 
is different from that Aristotle had in mind it is 
perhaps a permanent truth involved in his pecu- 
liar theory. 

What a terrible thing the ancient conception 
of fate is ! There is a certain permanent justifica- 
tion for it, since heredity and early environment 



157 



(EDIPUS THE KING 



do determine irrevocably certain possibilities 
and limitations. But the fate is not a jealous 
divinity visiting material consequences upon 
infractions of the moral and even ritualistic rules 
of life. It is only to-day that we are becoming 
conscious of the power of the free and intelligent 
will. Maeterlinck may be somewhat common- 
place, but he is right in saying that it is difficult 
to conceive an absolute tragedy, other than that 
resulting from such accidents as death, where a 
truly wise man is the center ; and such a remark 
is significant of the consciousness of the freedom 
of the personal will which increases with its pro- 
gressive emancipation. 

MASTERPIECES are surprisingly rare, yet 
when they come, how simple and inevit- 
able they seem to be ! It then appears as if all 
other workers had blindly thwarted their own 
efforts, while the master simply lent himself 
actively and freely to the forces of life and 
nature which found exalted and spontaneous 
expression through him. There is another side 
to this : the simplicity and spontaneity result 
not from absence of active effort, but from its 
supreme affirmation. Yet might not great 
achievement be more common if we only 
accepted life simply and ceased to thwart our 
best inspirations? How natural and inevitable 

158 



MOUNET-SULLY 



was Mounet-Suliy's interpretation of CEdipus! 
He felt the situation and gave it direct and har- 
monious expression. A lesser actor would have 
aimed at extravagant expression without re- 
sponding to the emotion, and so would have 
disgusted us with what we have learned to call 
" theatrical.'* So when Madame Duse plays 
Camille she enters into the spirit of the charac- 
ter, and every gesture, every intonation flows 
necessarily from within. The soul of all genius 
is to be Man : if one be great, one cannot fail to 
speak, act, write, paint, live, greatly. 



159 



Easter 

THE sun is shining on the Easter morn, 
The sullen wintry clouds afar are fled, 
The eastern mountains glow with rosy red, 
Proclaiming that the world anew is born. 
And I — with unavailing anguish torn, 
Who moaned in the dim valley of the dead — 
Forget how bitter were the tears I shed 
And how my life seemed endlessly forlorn. 
For into that lone valley, dim and low, 
A woman came and placed her hand in mine, 
And looked into my worn face white with woe, 
With eyes and smile that seemed as if divine, 
And whispered to me, " Dear, I love you so, 
Come with me where God's sunlit summits 
shine." 



i6o 




Herr Werner's Gliick 

ERR WERNER was a music teacher in 
a small school in Berlin, patronized exclu- 
sively by Catholics. His high talents won him 
the greatest admiration from all his pupils ; the 
young ladies dreamed of him at night, and in 
school used their little arts to attract him. But 
Herr Werner was married to his Art. He 
studied and worked constantly, dreaming of 
measuring himself some day with Mendelssohn 
and Mozart, and even the great Wagner. He 
used every opportunity for studying musical 
masterpieces, and rarely missed an important 
performance at the Opera House. 

One evening he sat hearing again Gounod's 
" Faust." The sweet, soft music had a marvelous 
power over him, but the dramatic story always 
gave him pain. As Faust ceased his song of 
passion and longing, Herr Werner turned, over- 
come by the emotion of the moment, to his next 
neighbor and said: " But is that love? " " No," 
came quickly the answer, " Faust does not know 
how to love, but Margaret does." " Yes, Mar- 
garet does," he assented. And then he blushed 
as he saw for the first time the modest girl to 
whom he had addressed his question. But she 
smiled so cordially that his embarrassment was 

i6i 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



soon relieved. In the interval between the acts 
they talked together, and he found that she was 
capable of appreciating not only the music but 
the whole human story of the drama. 

Herr Werner went home with a new image 
in his brain. He sat down to work for an hour 
at a waltz he was composing. But he found him- 
self inserting plaintive little strains that were not 
at all in harmony with the bright music that 
preceded them. " H-m," said Herr Werner, ** I 
must be ill ; I will go to bed." 

That night, for the first time in his life, Herr 
Werner dreamed of a pretty girl. The sweet 
face of his neighbor at the opera took shape in 
his dreams, and he thought himself walking with 
its owner in a beautiful, wooded lane, near a 
falHng stream of water. The next day he seemed 
abstracted, and to the astonishment of his pupils 
allowed several mistakes to go uncorrected. 

And so it went on for a week. Herr Werner 
could not understand himself. The waltz 
remained unfinished ; he had no taste for his 
usual labors. " Well," said he, " it is clear that 
I have been overworking. I must take an out- 
ing." So, not knowing where else to go, on 
Saturday he went in the morning to the Victoria 
Park. He walked steadily into it in an abstracted 
frame of mind, not seeing its beauties, until his 
ear was attracted by the music of falling water. 

162 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



He looked up, stopped, and was amazed to see 
the very lane he had seen in his dream on that 
memorable night when he first began to feel the 
effects of " overwork." He saw the very lane, 
and '' Gott im Himmel ! " gasped Herr Werner, 
and leaned trembling agamst the nearest tree, 
for there not twenty feet away was the veritable 
maiden of the opera and of his dream. She 
looked up, recognized him and smiled; and in 
confusion he went towards her. 

" Ah — Fraulein — 1-— I am so — so overjoyed 
to see you " stammered Herr Werner. She 
smiled again — it seemed to him Hke sunshine — 
arose and gave him her hand. Soon his dream 
was completely fulfilled as he found himself 
walking close beside her in the cool shade and in 
sound of the murmuring water. 

And so they stayed together the whole day. It 
seemed to Herr Werner the happiest day of his 
life. It was not long before they knew all of 
each other's brief history. She was a governess 
in a small family, an orphan with no friends in 
the great city. She, like Herr Werner, was tak- 
ing a day's rest from " overwork." At noon they 
went into the Tivoli gardens and had lunch 
together. Then they returned and spent the 
afternoon in the park. It seemed to Herr 
Werner he had never seen such beautiful green 
trees and blue sky, and such soft, delicate tints 



163 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



in grass and flowers. And at sunset the view 
from the Kreuzberg was enchanting. In the 
evening they Hstened together to the music in 
the TivoH gardens, and afterwards Herr Wer- 
ner went with her to her door. She promised to 
go with him to an opera the next week. 

Herr Werner's hoHday apparently did not 
effect a cure. Indeed his disease seemed to 
grow upon him. His waltz and opera he did not 
attempt to finish ; but he found himself writing 
out sweet, tender little songs which made him 
blush, and which he was unwilling to show to 
any one. 

And so it went on week after week : until Herr 
Werner and FrauleinSchatte had been, not once 
only, but many times to the lanes in the Victoria 
Park and in the Thiergarten. It was 'the sweet 
time of early fall, and many excursions they took 
together into the country. Herr Werner had 
never known the beautiful nature world before. 
But now he seemed a part of it ; he knew it and 
loved it. 

To both of them the time seemed like an end- 
less dream. They talked freely of their love ; but 
they did not speak of marriage. It seemed to 
them this sweet time must always go on just 
the same. 

The pupils began to talk of Herr Werner's 
imexpected behavior, and soon it came to the 

164 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



ears of the director. This pompous and narrow- 
minded dignitary had several daughters of his 
own, of whom he expected Herr Werner to 
choose one in due time as his spouse. He said 
nothing to Herr Werner, however, until the news 
came to him in the form of a complaint from a 
pupil's parents that Herr Werner's love was a 
Protestant. Then was the director's righteous 
wrath aroused. He sent for Herr Werner to 
come to his ofBce, and demanded to know what 
he meant in thus disgracing the school by his 
constant association with Protestants. 

No one had ever seen Herr Werner really 
angry. He was mild and kind, and the most one 
ever heard from him was a severe word to some 
particularly idle pupil. But now his face grew 
white with rage. He could scarcely speak. He 
managed to say that as his friends were of more 
value to him than the school, and as he was not 
a slave, he would forthwith tender his resigna- 
tion. 

The director was not prepared for this, and 
attempted to speak further. But Herr Werner 
had walked angrily from the room. The next 
day a conciliatory letter from the director 
was returned unopened by Herr Werner, and 
the latter's connection with the school was 
severed. 

Now what was Herr Werner to do? He had 

165 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



no money and no friends outside of the Cath- 
olics ; and to these he would not go. He was as 
yet too little known to be successful as a com- 
poser. He had grown up in his position in the 
school, and was entirely without the business 
abiHty requisite to get another engagement. 

Fraulein Schatte was almost as incapable as 
he. They talked it over together, and at last 
with very sad hearts decided that he must leave 
Berlin, and she must wait till he had found a 
substantial position somewhere. They had sel- 
dom spoken of religious differences, but to-night 
she looked up into his face, pressed closer to his 
side and said : *' Henry, will you still be a 
Catholic?" 

He had been brought up in his faith as she in 
hers. He looked down into her questioning face 
and smiled sadly as he said " Why, Liebchen, 
what else can I do ? " " Yes, yes, Henry, I 
know,'' and her face became grave. 

The last afternoon they spent together in the 
Victoria Park ; and afterwards walked home in 
the moonlight. They were very silent, and clung 
close together ; and when they reached her door, 
with one long embrace and choking voices they 
said good-bye. It was a very tear-stained pillow 
on which Fraulein Schatte's head rested that 
night. 

Herr Werner wandered on from place to 

i66 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



place, but everywhere he was a stranger, and he 
did not know how to seek a position. At last he 
came in desperation to Holland, and stopped at 
Rotterdam. He was kept up by the brave, sweet 
letters that came from his loved one. He went 
into a cheap boarding-house at Rotterdam and 
managed to get a few pupils in the city. But 
these were not enough to pay even his small 
expenses, and in despair he accepted an offer to 
play nightly in a music hall. 

But his letters stopped coming and he was 
almost crazed with fear. He wrote and wrote, 
but no answer came ; until finally he received a 
brief note telling him that Fraulein Schatte was 
dead. He tore the letter open and read it. His 
face grew white and for a time he stood stunned. 
Then he went to his room and locked himself in, 
walking up and down in wild anguish. '' She is 
dead, she is dead," kept ringing in his ears ; and 
it was as if he were walking in time tO' that 
terrible refrain. The air of the room seemed to 
choke him, and he rushed madly out. He walked 
on and on through the streets and into the 
country, by green fields where lazy cattle were 
eating the 'tall grass, past the windmills and the 
long line of Lombardy poplars, over the canals 
and by the red-tiled cottages, on and on into the 
night. 

That night the pianist was wanting at the 



167 



HERR WERXER'S GEUCK 



Casino Concert Hall and the manager was furi- 
ous. But Herr Werner was too valuable a man 
to lose, and when he cam.e into the hall the next 
evening with a white, worn face, all that he 
received was a few complaining words, to which 
he made no answer. 

Herr Werner played wildly that night the 
usual waltzes and popular pieces he was com- 
pelled to play ; but from time to tim.e came 
strains from the piano that hushed the rude talk 
and laughter in the great hall, and caused people 
to look at him in curious surprise. 

Herr Werner did not miss anv more nis^hts at 
/the concert hall. Xight after night, from eight 
till twelve, he played there ; night after night 
he came home to the cheap boarding-house to 
toss restlessly upon his bed. 

In the evening after supper he sat frequently 
in the dining-room with the family and their 
boarders, until it was time to go to the concert 
hall. Often he would play for them ; and he was 
regarded by them all as a queer but very lofty 
personage. 

It was here that I found him on one wild rainy 
night. He sat at the back of the table on a sofa 
smoking. Near him was the host, a short, fat 
German, with a loud voice and a self-important 
air. Two half-drunk sailors were quarrelling 
over a game of cards. The hostess, a cheery, 

i68 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



stout little body, sat busily knitting. A one-eyed 
carpenter was alternately drinking beer and 
explaining how to foretell the future with a 
prayer book and a key. 

After I had finished my supper, they insisted 
that Herr Werner should play for me a waltz he 
had recently composed. He played it over — a 
light, unmeaning thing, with the jingle of popu- 
lar songs in it — and sighed as he rose, saying he 
must go to the Casino. 

On the following evening I asked permission 
to accompany him. '^ This is not a large the- 
ater " he said as we walked down the street. 
*' It is only a concert hall where the working 
people come. It is in the poorest part of Rotter- 
dam. You must not expect much." 

We drank a glass of beer together, and then 
Herr Werner began to play. Gradually the hall 
filled. There were blue-shirted sailors with their 
sweethearts, strong, heavy-faced workingmen 
with their wives, some wild lads and girls of the 
lowest class. The hall was filled with tobacco 
smoke, and the waiters were kept busy filling 
the glasses with the cheap beer. 

The musical program was varied by the intro- 
duction of a few simple variety numbers. Some 
comic songs were sung, and a few acrobatic 
feats were performed. A little girl stood on a 
pedestal, waving in turn the flags of various 



169 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



nations, beginning with France and ending with 
Holland, to each of which Herr Werner played 
the national air. 

And so the evening went on, waltz and song 
following each other. Only once did Herr 
Werner play a tender thing that seemed to touch 
one's very heart and awaken all the memories 
of the past. At eleven I left him and went io my 
room. Two hours later I heard him come in, 
and all through the night from time to time I 
heard his racking cough. 

A few days later we walked together into the 
country. We stopped on the outskirts of the 
town to look back. Beside us was a wide green 
field, threaded with black canals half covered 
with a green scum. Here and there in the lux- 
uriant grass, so deep and fresh in color, lazy 
cattle were lying. In the background was a 
grove of trees, far to the right an old windmill, 
and behind, the mist-like masts of the distant 
ships. Towards the city rose the roofs of the 
nearer houses and the spires of the loftier 
churches. 

" That," said Herr Werner, pointing to a low 
spire in the outskirts of the city, " is the Cath- 
olic church, and that," pointing to a higher 
spire in the distance, " is the chief Protestant 
church." And after a pause he said : " But I 
do not believe in either now, they are all a lie." 

170 



HERR WERNER'S GLUCK 



We walked on together until the sun was 
setting and we were forced to turn our steps 
toward the city. We stopped a moment to watch 
the fading red and gold in the western sky. The 
soft, moist air seemed to rest over all the scene 
like a benediction, the cattle were lost in the 
dark green of the distant fields, and the shadows 
of the tall trees beside us had sunk into the 
darkness of night. 

" O my friend," said Herr Werner — " It is 
years since I have used that word, I am alone, 
alone in the world — O my friend, I know that 
I have talents and power. I love music ; in it I 
can express my soul. I have prostituted my art 
but still I can begin anew. I know that I can 
create works which shall delight and instruct 
mankind." He paused, and the racking cough 
came ; after a few moments he said : '' But what 
is the use? What is the use? Hope is gone, 
and desire is gone. She is dead! She is dead! 
The separation was so long, and she could not 
bear it. She was so alone. And I could do 
nothing. What were my talents worth? — they 
could not help her! O God, and I loved her 
so ! I loved her so ! " 

The man's voice choked with a sob. I took 
his hand and pressed it. We turned and walked 
silently toward the city in the gathering night. 



171 



NOTRE DAME DE PARIS 



[Paris, September 30, 1898] 

STRANGE — the grotesques in Gothic art, 
and not yet sufficiently explained. Notre 
Dame swarms with them. One lean form, half 
animal, half devil, looks down over Paris, a 
strange leer upon its stone face. It has crouched 
there for centuries, while the tide of life swept 
on. Giordano Bruno passed beneath it as he 
wandered restlessly over the world. Erasmus, a 
vagabond student, smiled up at it knowingly 
during his early days in Paris. Its grin was 
above the horrors of St. Bartholomew and the 
unchained madness of the revolution. It looks 
down still, the same unchanging leer upon its 
face — grotesque, ironical, with a darker sneer 
than Mephistopheles or the denying spirit of the 
book of Job : it seems the evil genius of Paris, 
the spirit of its madness and its sin. 



172 



The Music of Pythagoras 

[1886J 

ONE voice speaks from all things 
And one word is all it speaks, 
Alike the tempest's gloom, the sunshine's 

heaven 
And the heart of man. 

The tiniest worm which in low highness creeps, 
Or rock-ribbed mountains from whose heavenly 

peaks 
The vision far and wide sweeps on the eye. 
The word is God, whose meaning no one knows, 
Nor ever has known, can know, all in all, 
The one eternal lesson of the universe. 
Which holds the shining of one face alone, 
The beating of one heart, the voice of voices. 
The music of the soul. 



173 



CONFESSION 



ONE of the deepest instincts of the heart is 
that which prompts absolute self-confes- 
sion. Every true man desires that the world 
about him should know him as he is, otherwise 
he is in danger of the pretension and hypocrisy 
which he fears as the worst blight of his soul. 
He would even be willing that the misunder- 
standing multitude should paw and gloat over 
the confession if by making it he could be under- 
stood by those with whom he must live and 
work. What withholds him from verbal confes- 
sion is that it would not be self-revelation; for 
the statement of the external incidents and cir- 
cumstances which he might relate would gen- 
erally lead to a greater misconception of his life 
than if he kept silent. The true confession is 
the confession of the soul of the life, not of its 
incidents, and for this words are, with rare ex- 
ceptions, hopelessly inadequate. A higher con- 
fession is possible in action, and then a man 
must wait to be understood, compelled often to 
rest satisfied if a few inspired by love can read 
through all the expressions to the heart of the 
life. 



174 



CORMON'S CAIN 



[Paris, September 30, 1S98J 

CORMON'S CAIN is even more powerful 
than I remembered it : here is the terrible 
flight from the destiny which cannot be avoided 
because it is one's own past deed. Remorseless 
stretches away the desert sand under the cease- 
less shining of the sun. The fugitives hasten on ; 
the tall, lean form of Cain, powerful but haggard, 
one hand stretched out as if to find a path across 
the trackless v/aste, leads the group. Behind, are 
the sons and daughters, with the wife and grand- 
children borne on a litter. Strong and majestic 
— the figures of these sons of Cain ; easily they 
carry the litter and the slain animals. One 
splendid giant tenderly carries his dainty, dark- 
eyed wife in his arms. But in all the faces is the 
troubled, restless look of one haunted by the 
irrevocable past. Even love cannot surmount 
it, but is subdued to an undertone and dominated 
by the one tragic mood inspired of relentless 
destiny. On and on they sweep, from nowhere 
to nowhere, ever on across the wide desert under 
the burning sun. No shadow to hide them, no 
gray sky to rest, no murmuring forest brook to 
whisper peace, only the scourge without them 
and the terrible destiny within : fate — the fate 
of one's own dead past ! 



175 



COROT 

[Paris, December 27, 1898] 

THE work of Corot answers a peculiar need 
of the modern spirit. I never come back 
to his landscapes in the Louvre — unreal, idyllic, 
full of " a light that never was on sea or land " — 
without feeling a sense of rest and beauty that 
answers a need made ever deeper by the restless 
pressure of modern life. 

This supplemental value of the fine arts has 
not been sufftciently understood, yet it has a 
deep meaning. For art should not only ex- 
press those forces which are dominant in life 
and action, it must also reveal those minor 
chords of the spirit whose music is often 
drowned by the insistent iteration of the major 
notes of existence, yet which is so necessary to 
the full symphony of Hfe. 



176 



RHYTHM 



[April I, 1897] 

ONE of the commonest and most pardonable 
of our mistakes is in imagining that Hfe 
can ahvays be at high-water mark. The abiUty 
to feel strongly any emotion depends upon the 
presence of intervening periods when we do not 
feel. It is true of both emotions and sensations 
that the constant presence of the same stimulus 
dulls temporarily our sensibilities. It is only at 
rare intervals that we stand upon the heights, 
and after each such vision there must be the 
slow toiling over the sand-waste and up the 
mountain slope. There are times when we are 
even compelled to wait like Dante during the 
night, with only the stars of faith, hope and love 
shining down upon us. 

So with the personal relations of human Hfe : 
we cannot be always upon the heights, and it is 
wrong to blame ourselves overmuch because of 
our failure to be so. Every mountain means at 
least two valleys, and the very possibility of 
standing at times upon the supremest summits 
depends upon the intervening periods of quiet 
acceptance of the waiting during the night, or 
slow struggle toward the yet unattained vision 
of the day. 

One reason for our failure to recognize 
beforehand the inevitable variation of mood and 
elevation in our personal relations is that in all 



177 



RHYTHM 



artistic portraiture of life we represent only the 
salient points and the dominating tendencies. 
It is of course just these which are most inter- 
pretative of the life ; but it is never true that one 
dominating tendency is the whole of life. Beside 
it are many others, each of which has its own 
permanent meaning in the complex personality. 



178 



ROTTERDAM 



[A picture near Rotterdam, September 15, 1894] 

A WIDE, green field, green with that intense 
luxuriant green peculiar to these moist 
lands ; a flock of sheep nibbling leisurely at the 
abundant grass ; here and there a sluggish canal, 
black and half-covered with scum ; to the left the 
spire of a church and the roofs of a few houses 
of the city ; in the background a dense grove of 
trees ; to the right an old windmill, and beyond 
it the shadowy masts of the distant ships. A 
misty air resting over it all, with a dull gray sky 
broken only by a streak of gold in the western 
horizon. 

I LOOK down the long level road at whose 
end is the gray and gold of the western sky. 
Children are playing in the sand heap beside me. 
Down the road, with slow, long strides, comes a 
workman, his head bent down and his dinner- 
pail hung over his shoulder. The day is over, 
night comes, and its sweet magic is suggested in 
the black lacework of the fir trees against the 
gold of the sky. The workman is going home — 
home to rest. 



179 



A Hand-Organ 

THE music rang out in the damp air with a 
melancholy quaver. It was only a hand- 
organ that the man played in the hall below. 
The notes trembled up through the dim back 
staircase and filled the room. The tunes were 
many, some light, some sombre, but all had the 
same melancholy quaver. 

At a table in the room above sat a man. He 
looked out of the window into the murky air of 
the street and at the dingy wall of the house 
opposite. His face was wan and haggard, and 
rested upon his hand. He sat quite still, neither 
moving nor speaking. Something in the melan- 
choly tones of the music awoke in him memories 
of emotions he had once felt and ideals over 
which he had once dreamed. They were not his 
now ; for this man had sold his soul. He sat 
quite still, his white face resting upon his hand, 
while up through the dingy staircase came the 
melancholy notes of the hand-organ and trem- 
bled on the damp air of the room. 



1 80 



SELF-REVERENCE 



[July I, 1901] 

PERHAPS the greatest obstacle to noble liv- 
ing is the low view we take of ourselves. 
People are ashamed of honest feeling, and often 
consider it an indication of culture to treat the 
simple realities of love and work with flippant 
cynicism. A whole literature has grown up 
expressing this attitude, so poisoning to the 
springs of action. When this view is not pres- 
ent, frequently life is regarded on a wholly 
sordid plane, where work is merely to make a 
living and love to gratify selfishness. There is 
no hope that we can appreciate the worth and 
meaning of life until our love and work come to 
be to us great ideals to which we must conse- 
crate ourselves. 



i8i 



RAVENNA 



[Ravenna, June, 1901] 

AS WE walked through the side streets of 
this little, strange, old town, our first 
evening, they seemed wierdly silent and 
deserted, reminding us of our night walks in the 
Ghetto of Venice. Utterly different from Flor- 
ence is this old city, stagnant here beside the 
alluvial plain that fills the mouth of its ancient 
port, living because there is no reason to die, 
dragging on its existence across the years 
because so many dead years stretch away 
behind. 

One can realize how Dante must have chafed 
at the last years of his exile spent here. Even 
then Ravenna was a doomed city, sadly remind- 
ing the beholder of an irrevocable, great past, 
while Florence was forging ahead with intense 
life and superabundant activity. It was the 
golden age of Florentine development, when the 
great buildings were being constructed and the 
exquisite painting was at its shining dawn. Sad, 
indeed, was it that the man who did more than 
any other to inspire the genius of the following 
great age In his native city should have been 
denied even the satisfaction of pillowing his 
dying head there and of breathing out his spirit 
in the midst of associations fragrant with the 
memory of that " Beatrice who was called so 
by many who knew not wherefore." 



182 



SAN VITALE 



[Ravenna, June, 1901] 

SAN VITALE deserves its reputation/' beau- 
tiful as an oriental dream" it must have 
been in its original glory. Even shamelessly 
painted over, as it is today, its noble lines and 
bewildering wealth of mosaic in the tribune 
make an impression quite oriental in character. 
The mosaics are like very rich tapestries, of Per- 
sian or other Asiatic make, in color and general 
effect. Alas ! the greatest part of the beauty 
is lost in photographs, which give only the con- 
ception, with little of the feeling of the original. 

One is impressed in Ravenna, more than any- 
where else, with the excellent adaptability of 
mosaic to the purposes of church decoration. 
The very limitations in the artistic expression of 
conceptions are of value in compelling that 
gravity which should belong to religious adorn- 
ment, while the warm color, so permanent, is 
fitting to monuments which gather impressive- 
ness with the lapse of centuries. 

One can understand the evolution of early 
Christian architecture better at Ravenna than 
elsewhere. Two types prevail, the basilica and 
the round temple. San Vitale is the only one 
uniting in a way the impression of both styles, 
fusing the harmony of the circular temple with 
the majestic and varied beauty of columns and 
aisles. 



183 



LA PIN ETA 



[Ravenna, June, 1901] 

WHAT a wonderful day we have had ! The- 
odoric and his dim majesty, the mosaics 
of bygone ages, basiUcas eloquent of the first 
great mastery of the world by Christianity, 
bell-towers of simple brick but matchless in 
unadorned harmony, the tomb and presence of 
Dante, the fields with bright-dressed, busy, hay- 
gathering women, sluggish canals and green 
rice-fields with avenues of poplars, and best of 
all the marvelous pine forest sweeping endlessly 
away, and breathing the memory of Dante's 
slow steps and bowed, brooding head and 
Byron's gloomy enthusiasm ! A day rich with 
association and new, deep impression, never to 
be forgotten. 

I was amazed at the majesty of the pine for- 
est. The books that tell us it is destroyed are 
wrong. I have never felt the same impression 
in the presence of any other aspect of nature. 
The tall stems with the broad dark crowns 
made the trees seem to lift away, rebuking us. 
And suddenly a breath of wind, scarce felt be- 
low, swept the tops, and there arose a wave of 
melody, deepening into strong, sweeping tones 
and fading to the faintest pathetic sigh, seem- 
ing to come from above and away like a whisper 
of God. No other music is like it. I can under- 



184 



LA PIN ETA 



stand Dante's wood in the terrestrial paradise, 

where the music is like that which 

•' From branch to branch goes gathering on 
Through the pine forest on the shore of Chiassi, 
When iEolus unlooses the Sirocco." 

And Byron's evening hour sinking over the 
pine forest by Ravenna's shore has a new 
meaning. 



185 



ART AND MORALITY 



[Paris, September 30, 1898] 

IF THE English resemble the Romans, the 
French are the Greeks of to-day. Among 
the one people is solid strength, a certain 
dogged, heavy persistence, and an absence of 
quick sensitiveness and refined appreciation. 
The other people is volatile and versatile, gifted 
in all that concerns artistic execution and 
appreciation, but is sadly lacking in permanent 
earnestness and vigor of character. As the 
Greeks conquered their masters and imposed 
their own specific culture upon the Romans, so, 
but in a less degree, do the traditions of French 
art dominate other people to-day. 

One wonders whether this opposition must 
always exist. Is it impossible to unite rugged 
strength and artistic appreciation, versatility 
and consistent action, art and morality ? If not, 
the inconoclasts and puritans of all ages were 
right : but that is unbelievable. Is the higher 
union to come in America? Is the union of 
Celtic fire, alertness and sensitiveness, and An- 
glo-Saxon strength and stability sufficient in 
America to promise the world the unprece- 
dented spectacle — a race whose civilization 
unites the vigor and permanence of Rome with 
the art and science of Greece? That w^ere a 
destiny ! 



186 



Dead 

IT was a cold, cheerless day. The sunlight 
struggled through the clouds, but was unable 
to warm the earth below. 

She sat at the window, her face resting on her 
frail hand. From the adjoining room came 
strains of music which seemed mournful to her, 
they called up so many memories she wished 
would die. She looked down into the street 
below. It was filled with people hurrying to and 
fro — blindly and aimlessly, it seemed to her. She 
pressed her hand over her eyes, but she could 
not weep. Her eyes were dry and burning. She 
sat a long, long time, and the shadows of night 
began to fall. She wished — oh, how she longed 
for just one more day of life. It was so terrible 
to be dead, and surrounded forever by these 
gibbering ghosts whose vain forms mocked the 
joys of Hfe that was passed. 

She fell into a dream. The ghosts were 
clothed in human form. She dreamed she was 
alive. She sat in a lovely garden ; all about 
were beautiful flowers. She breathed their 
exquisite perfume, and knew them — they were 
human joys. She bent down over a little plot of 
ground through which a tiny sprout was pierc- 
ing. She knew the little life, it was part of 

187 



DEAD 

herself, it was her precious human joy. How 
tenderly she cared for it. She watered it with 
tears of gladness, and smiled upon it with the 
sunshine of faith and hope. And the little love- 
plant grew strong. By and by — how eagerly 
she watched it — a little bud formed upon it and 
unfolded a flower of marvelous color and fra- 
grance. Ah, the joy! She bent down over it 
trembling with ecstasy. In her hands she took 
the beautiful flower — her love-joy, her life, — and 
broke it from its stem. A moment of delirious 
ecstasy — and then — a wild cry of horror, for it 
crumbled to ashes in her hands. She awoke 
from her dream in an agony of horror. She 
wrung her hands in wild despair. To dream she 
was alive, and awake to death ! Life has no 
such agony; it is reserved for the dead alone. 
She pressed her wild eyes on her hands, but still 
she saw the dead about her. It is the horror of 
death that one must always see the dead. From 
her lips broke a wail of eternal anguish, which 
caused the ghosts about her to chatter and 
gibber. '' O God ! let me forever dream of 
life ! " — but there is no answer for the prayers 
of the dead. 



i88 



FAITH 

[Berlin, November 9, 1894] 

A STRONG faith in the permanence of what 
is best is a sufficient basis for life, and is not 
open to tiie same criticism as a fixed dogma of 
immortality. Yet I find myself clinging with 
more and more tenacity to the thought of per- 
sonal immortality. To my reason that is the 
only possible solution of the mystery of life. It 
is because I realize the partial character of my 
reason that I feel compelled to abstain from 
stating the faith as a dogma. I must believe 
that the final solution would appear rational to 
my reason; yet that does not justify me in 
asserting that what appears to me now the only 
rational explanation possible, is true. 

If there is no eternity of the subject for whom 
change exists, as well as; of the process of 
change, it seems to me hopeless to attempt any 
understanding of the farce of life. Unless there 
is this eternity there can be no rational basis of 
morals, no motive for living. Warmly human 
souls may try to cheat themselves into living for 
the good of all, but if the whole is a farce 
wherein is any good for all? Each merely post- 
pones himself for another, and no one lives. 
Selfish souls may confess their blank egotism 
but real life there is none. Neither kindly utili- 
tarianism nor frank hedonism can cheat us into 
imagining that the farce of life has a meaning 

189 



FAITH 

or that there is any stronger reason for virtue 
than for Hfe, if nothing is eternal hut change. 

Yet no one believes life is a farce except those 
who follow a narrow line of reasoning. Men 
who earn their living with their own hands, men 
who stand close to nature, are rarely pessimists. 
There is something better in human life than 
farce and failure. Healthy human beings can- 
not rest in a philosophy of despair. Such a 
doctrine may satisfy the worn-out nerves of a 
diseased civilization, but every strong, well life 
will react against it with immense force. It is 
in this inevitable reaction that our chief hope 
lies. If the universe were what the pessimist 
claims, it would be below the level of human life. 
No man would create such a world : no man 
would be guilty of bringing into being such a 
chaos of irrational folly and failure. If the uni- 
verse be such, then the heart and reason — the 
highest outcome of the process — are in utter op- 
position to the whole process, which is impos- 
sible. 



190 



A Love Song 

THERE is only one song in the robin's 
breast, 
And one that the brown thrush sings ; 
In the music that comes from the ring-dove's 
nest 
Ever one cadence rings. 

There is only one thought in the poet's brain, 
As he sings to the brave and free ; 

There is only one word in the minstrel's strain — 
The word that my heart tells thee. 

The word that echoes o'er meadow and grove, 

And goes from me to thee, 
Is love, love, and forever love — 

My love, I love but thee. 



191 



GROWTH 



[Paris, August 22, 1898] 

THE capacity for joy in any human being is 
in direct proportion to the fineness and 
depth of feeling. Hence any course of Hfe 
which steadily hardens the feeHngs is destroying 
the capacity for joy. A man who has lived so 
as to deaden his sensibilities has sold his human 
birthright to happiness. Coarse excitement or 
brutal sensation may be his, but not joy. 

After all, pleasure is not joy, and the highest 
happiness we have is part pain. The deepest 
human craving is not to have pleasurable excite- 
ment or to avoid pain : it is to touch those deeps 
of life where there is infinite joy — and pain. 
Hence the superficiality of all happiness the- 
ories : they do not comprehend human nature. 
No healthy human soul would choose in the last 
resort to be deluded with a pleasurable false- 
hood rather than to know a bitter truth. We 
crave love, even though it means pain as well as 
joy. All education, all refinement bring suflfer- 
ing and the capacity for suffering, just as they 
bring joy and the capacity for joy. The pain 
may in many cases be greater than the joy, yet 
we choose the growth, for it means life. We 
would suffer the agonies of a Briinhild rather 
than be incapable of love. We would submit to 
the tortures of doubt and questioning that 
oppressed the soul of Hamlet, rather than rest 



192 



GROWTH 



on a distorted truth or be insensible to the 
mystery of life. The path of life, of growth, of 
more positive realization, even though it be the 
path of pain — such is our choice, such is the 
final choice of all human souls. 



193 



THE ALPS 

[Brunnen, July 3, 1901] 

VV/HITE clouds rest lazily on the mountain 
W sides. Over the green pines on the 
rugged slope behind moves slowly a mist-cloud 
of fog. All is silent but for the cluck of a frog 
and the distant barking of a dog. Beyond in the 
distance snovi^-clad heights rise. The warm sun, 
half-hidden in the clouds, nevertheless heats the 
lazy air. The green lake faintly ripples against 
the greener sedge. It is a day for dreams. 



194 



THE ALPS 

[Brunnen, July 7, 1901] 

TO-DAY has been entirely clear, and what a 
day it has been ! Changing from hour to 
hour, the lake has varied from light blue to the 
black green of the evening, while the moods of 
the mountains have altered again and again. 
During most of the day a light mist in the at- 
mosphere has dimmed the distant peaks, but 
to-night the air is clear and transparent. We 
have watched the shadows creep up the oppo- 
site slopes, darkening the wealth of green until 
now only the peak of the Bristenstock still 
glows in the sunshine, while over it the clouds 
are transfigured with rosy light. All is peace. 
At intervals comes the chirp of a bird just going 
to sleep for the night. The air is quite still, so 
that the lake is without a ripple and the leaves 
near us scarcely stir. Moment by moment the 
light fades and the colors darken, but so grad- 
ually that one feels the change in mood rather 
than clearly sees the process. A wonderful 
nature-world, lifting, calming, deepening to 
heart and mind ! 



195 



THE ALPS 

[Brunnen, July 15, 1901] 

TO-NIGHT we had the majesty of a chang- 
ing storm. The sky darkened and the air 
grew cool. Before us rose the green sides of 
the nearer mountains, while in the background 
snow-covered peaks gleamed in the sunshine. 
From the left came the storm, drawing over the 
mountains with a gray curtain of falling rain and 
covering the distant surface of the lake with 
mist. The Hghtnings flashed in brilliant lines 
of silver fire ; the thunder, rolling distant but 
grim and deep, seemed the voice of the wakened 
storm. We were at one side : a light patter of 
rain, a nearer flash of lightning that seemed to 
take us into the spirit of the tempest, but noth- 
ing obscured the majesty of the wide view. 



196 



ART 

[Paris, October 26, 1898] 

ART begins as symbolism. A carved statue 
is produced not for the sake of beauty or 
truth to Hfe, but as the symbol, often arbitrary, 
of an idea. With the development of art, truth 
to life and the achievement of beautiful form 
tend to replace the arbitrary symbolism that 
preceded them. But is not something lost? 
Should not all art be a language for the expres- 
sion of the spirit? Is not the peculiar attraction 
that naive painting and sculpture possess for us 
a result of their symbolic character? 

As the body is the highest expression of the 
soul, so true symbolism should be natural and 
not arbitrary. All nature is a language to voice 
the spirit. In passing from conventional and 
arbitrary symbols to forms which are beautiful 
and natural, art shows a right development. But 
the danger is that art may be cultivated for the 
sake of beautiful forms alone, or even to display 
the mastery of technical difficulties, while it is 
only when art is as meaningful in content as it is 
beautiful in form that it is the highest art. Fur- 
thermore, as an absence of soul is more evident 
and painful in a beautiful body than in an ugly 
one, so a lack of content is more offensive in art 
that is technically perfect than in that which is 
less masterly in form. 



197 



INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY 

[Paris, August 30, 1894] 

FIVE thousand years ago men were dream- 
ing about a future life and building up a 
faith in it. It behooves one to realizes the vast- 
ness of the mystery of human life, to attempt to 
comprehend something of the whole experience 
of man in the long, changing centuries, and not 
to affirm or deny dogmatically on the basis of the 
thought of the hour. We are inclined always to 
consider the last word final, forgetting that 
every age has been modern to the men of it, and 
that what seems to us absolute may be but a 
partial phase in a changing process of thought. 
How different *' modern thought " will look five 
hundred years from now! Best keep open to 
truth, in the certainty that there is a deep below 
our last sounding, and a height from which our 
petty hill of vision will be lost in the level plain. 



198 



Coronado 

SOFTLY the sunlight rests on the rugged 
brown slopes of Point Loma, 
Blue and serene is the sky, peaceful and blue is 

the sea ; 
Lightly rises the swell which stirs the breast of 

the waters, 
Lightly rises and falls in the breath of a south 

sea-wind. 
Nearer the shore the waves seem to pause and 

rest for a moment, 
Gathering greater force for a splendid sweep on 

the sand; 
Lifting crests of foam, they rush resistlessly 

onward, 
Breaking at last with a roar like the sound of a 

storm in the pines ; 
Dyingly then they sink silently back to the 

ocean. 
Taken again to the heart of the Deep that gave 

them birth. 
Nobly the curve of the beach sweeps away to 

the western mountains, 
North of the tongue of land the bay sleeps 

undisturbed ; 
Far to the south the haze rests lightly over the 

islands — 

199 



CORONADO 



Fortunate isles they seem in their dehcate, 
dreamy grace. 

The city seems to sleep, still on its distant hill- 
sides, 

Quietly at anchor the ships in the harbor lie ; 

Peaceful and calm is the day, peace and rest 
about me, 

Peace in the silent air, peace in the sweep of the 
sea. 



200 



THE DESERT 



[The Desert, November 20, 1897] 

A SOMBRE gray sky of that dead leaden 
color that seems to oppress the heart ; the 
wide, level stretches of sand waste freckled with 
patches of dead, yellow weeds ; a fine dust in the 
air, not sufficient to obscure the vision but 
choking one's breath; at wide intervals a few 
rude farm-buildings, huddledtogether by gloomy 
trees, over all a sense of dreary desolation — 
the Desert! 



201 



THE MINISTRY OF NATURE 

[Paris, December 29, 1898] 

HOW remote are the high mountains from 
the activities of a great city ! Where men 
are heaped together the swarm of restless hfe 
absorbs one's attention and destroys the per- 
spective of the spirit. It becomes necessary to 
go away from it all to feel the lifting power of 
the unshackled and serene nature-world. 

The very absence of moral possibility in 
Nature makes her influence profoundly calming 
and uplifting to the spirit of man. The peace 
of the countless centuries of quiet and imcon- 
scious growth contrasts with the haste and sin 
and pain of human life. There is thus a min- 
istry of Nature, the function of which increases 
steadily with the refining of life. As we must 
ever go back to the great realities of human 
life, so we must return to our Nature-mother, 
who knows when her child would be charmed 
with the music of her myriad voices, and when, 
wearied with the glare and the stress of the 
pitiless day, he longs to rest his tired head in the 
sweet Lethe he finds on her breast. 



202 



THE ALPS 

[Handegg, Switzerland, August ii, 1901] 

EVENING, and I sit in the little inn, while the 
foaming river dashes loudly down the steep 
rocks without, and the silence of the pine-trees 
that stand all about is full of deep meaning. 
Nature has done her best for us to-day. Bril- 
liant sunshine, that revealed the far-away snow- 
covered mountains ; wild dashing rain, mist-fog, 
that hid the hills and enveloped us in gloom ; the 
clearing away of nearer clouds, which left dark 
peaks sombre against the leaden sky. A wonder- 
ful day, too, it has been in the range of beauty 
revealed to us : from the piled ice of the Rhone 
glacier to the foaming torrent of the Aare shut 
within its narrow banks, from the ragged rock 
peaks to the sweep of pine-fringed valley, a 
world of rugged beauty has been around us. 

How impossible it is to express in any written 
or painted form the impressive sweep and ma- 
jesty of these mountains ! Not only does this 
nature-world seem forbidding, it so overwhelms 
that one is appalled with the idea of giving it 
any expression. 



203 



Notre Dame des Victoires 

[Paris, October 26, 1898] 

A DUSKY interior, with dim light. The 
round-vauhed church dark with the cease- 
less smoke of incense and candles. A group of 
worshipers behind a blazing mass of candles in 
one transept. Before an altar of the Virgin, 
covered with countless tablets of thanksgiving, 
a man kneeling in earnest and silent prayer. 
Down the low, dim aisle other worshipers here 
and there in the dusky light. 



204 



DISCIPLES 

[December 28, 1898] 

HOW often the Christians have become the 
Pharisees ! It is frequently those who 
profess to be followers of the Master who are 
engaged in stoning the adulterous woman. And 
the pitiless attitude of the conventional religion- 
ist is supported by the arrogant gospel of sel- 
fishness which has been preached by a material- 
istic science. A low interpretation of the doc- 
trine of evolution has made it seem to support 
the selfishness of those who would crush out 
all who do not conform to their theory in 
thought and action. 

Were the Master to come again there would 
be some with his name upon their lips among 
those whom he would have to scourge from the 
temple and reprove in high places. And how 
needed is the reiteration of the same gospel that 
called Peter from his nets and blinded Paul on 
the road to Damascus. The world is full of the 
same failure and needs to be called back to the 
same love, tenderness, mercy and purity. 



205 



Ma Vie Arrive a son Matin 

THE room was hot and close, with the crowd 
of men and women loudly talking and 
laughing. Tobacco smoke floated above all — 
the halo of the beershop. The pianist seemed 
trying to drown the noise of coarse talk by an 
equally incoherent sound from the piano. Mon- 
sieur Armand was announced to sing '* Ma vie 
arrive a son matin." He was a little old man, 
with a partly bald head having long curly black 
hair at the sides and behind. He sang with a 
very grave face. There were many jests in the 
song, not very bright and rather coarse, which 
seemed to please the people immensely. But he 
sang with a strange minor note and a quaver in 
the song which was out of keeping with what 
it expressed. Behind the little old man, shroud- 
ing him, and painting pictures that spoke louder 
than his song, was the old man's dream. 

Once, a long time ago, when the little old man 
was a child, a ray of light had come down and 
entered into him. It was not very large or very 
bright, but like all rays of light it lived of itself 
and it was very hard to kill. It slept in him for 
a long time ; but by and by, when he grew into 
manhood, he began to become conscious of it. 
It made him see things which the people about 

206 



MA VIE ARRIVE A SON MATIN 

him did not see. It worried him, for the things 
it revealed to him were very different from those 
the men about him did. So he set out to kill it ; 
but it was a long, hard task. First, he covered 
it over with the dirt of obscene jests and deeds. 
But the light still shone through dimly, and 
worried him more than before ; for it seemed to 
reprove him for what he had done. So, slowly 
and with great effort, he collected the slime of 
depraved desires and habitual vice. Now this 
slime is very peculiar ; for while at first it is thin 
and transparent, in a little while it grows black 
and hard as iron. So the little old man cemented 
the dirt that covered his light with this iron 
mortar; and now the light ceased to trouble 
him. 

He sighed a great sigh of relief. Now, 
thought he, I shall be happy. So he buried his 
face in the dirt and covered his hands and feet 
with the slime. But he was not happy ; he grew 
sick of the blackness and smell of the dirt and 
the slime ; he began to long to see the fair, 
bright sights that his Hght had revealed to 
him. So one day he took the pickaxe of re- 
morse and the heavy iron hammer of de- 
spair, and set out to break the thick crust 
that was about his light. He toiled a long 
time, and by and by the mortar broke into 
pieces. It was no longer slime and dirt, it 

207 



MA VIE ARRIVE A SON MATIN 

was only a heap of broken rubbish. Now the 
Httle old man looked for his light. But it was 
not there, it had died. He threw himself down 
upon the heap of rubbish and gave a great cry. 
But there was no hope ; and it was only the 
echoes of that cry of despair that quavered in 
the undertone of the little old man's song in 
the beershop. 



208 



FAITH 

[Berlin, January 2, 1895] 

A MORALITY that does not rest upon a 
basis of faith cannot be permanent. For 
what we are to do in any detail of Hfe rests upon 
what we think about the whole of life and its 
meaning; and while that depends upon all our 
knowledge, it is not knowledge but faith. Hence 
the efifort to divorce morality from faith must 
end in failure. Either the faith will be present 
still in some form, or the moral teaching will be 
quite inefifectual. The only sanction for a mor- 
ality not based on our whole world-view would 
be the good feelings of the heart (developed 
on the basis of a better teaching) ; but these 
feelings would lead to exactly the same result 
without the moral teaching, hence the latter is an 
unnecessary encumbrance. A system of moral- 
ity that does not rest on faith hangs in the air 
and is without meaning and relation to life. 



209 



ASSISI 

[Asslsl, December, 1898] 

TOWARD the middle of the afternoon the 
rain-clouds broke and Hfted somewhat, roll- 
ing back in great dark masses above the valley 
and hanging low upon the higher mountains. 
It was under such a sky that we climbed the long 
road from the Portiuncula to Assisi. 

From the piazza of Santa Clara the wide 
stretch of the valley opened beneath us, the 
nearer hills silver gray with old olive trees, the 
great mountains dark and purple beyond the 
plains. The large masses of cloud were lighted 
up with the setting sun. Through a long break 
the southern sky was gold and then deepening 
crimson, while across the lake of flame a dark 
arm of cloud boldly projected itself. 

The effect of the sunset was indescribable. 
Behind us the cold and forbidding stone houses 
of the mediaeval town clustered in a heap on the 
side of the hill. Beside us was the plain, rude 
facade of Santa Clara, with its gigantic but- 
tresses and one beautifully carved rose-window. 
While over the valley and the rugged moun- 
tains the mingled flame and gloom played 
miracles of light and shadow. A fitting intro- 
duction to the birthplace of the vast spiritual 
revival, to the home of one who, more than 
any other, set the gloom and meditation of the 



210 



ASSISI 

middle ages on fire with a new gospel of love 
and holiness. 

AFTER ALL, the best memorials of St. Fran- 
cis are the legends of the Fioretti. These 
belong to those stories which are truer than his- 
tory because they are full of the spirit of that 
about which they play. Here one finds the true 
St. Francis — loving, earnest, filled with an 
unworldliness that may easily be mistaken for 
eccentricity ; exquisitely simple, teaching more 
by his life than by the inspired simplicity of his 
preaching. Rightly these stories are accredited 
to no author : they are the spontaneous creation 
of the time, expressing the inner significance of 
the life of Francis. 

[Half way tap Monte Subasio, December 9, 1898] 

THE air is full of peace. Above is the warm 
sunlight and a cloudless sky. Below, the 
mountain side is covered with a forest of shim- 
mering olive trees, whence the voices of those 
harvesting the fruit echo brightly from time to 
time. Now it is the shouting of a child, now the 
singing of somic bars of a strangely modulated 
melody. A little lower down, the valley is filled 
with a dense rolling mass of white fog, dashed 
here and there into mountain waves. Across 
its billowy breast the opposite summits rise deep 

211 



ST. FRANCIS 



purple in the sunlight, while afar to the right 
Perugia glistens. 

WE HAVE just passed an orchard filled 
with olive-pickers — men, women, youths 
and children. All seemed so busy and so happy, 
singing and talking at their work. One could 
imagine St. Francis coming by on his way to a 
week's solitary meditation in his mountain cell 
and stopping to preach to the peasants. They 
would gather around him, laughing and 
chatting, here and there one touched deeply, 
returning to their work with a tender feeling for 
the ''little poor man" and with a new sense of 
awe in their lives. 

ST. FRANCIS is a rare example of a man 
living out his inspiration in the place where 
it comes to him. Usually the prophet must go 
far away, that physical distance may make 
possible an appreciation of his greatness. Famili- 
arity is an almost insuperable obstacle to giving 
a lofty message. No good comes out of Naza- 
reth, and Nazareth is always the place where we 
live. ** Why," we say, " we knew his father, 
what can this son of a carpenter know that we 
do not know ; whence comes any unusual mes- 
sage to him?" And so God's miracles go on, 
unseen because of their very nearness. It is to 

212 



ST. FRANCIS 



the remote we look for a revelation, while all the 
time it would speak to us from the eyes of those 
who are near us and would voice itself through 
the commonplace world in which we live. St. 
Francis is one great example of a life so utterly 
and consistently consecrated to a noble aim as 
to compel appreciation from those immediately 
about him. 



213 



Evening 

MOUNTAIN heights are glowing in red and 
golden, 
Softly falls the evening o'er the valley, 
Hesper brightly shines in the glow of sunset, 
Everywhere peace ! 



214 



LOVE 

[Berlin, November, 1894] 

THE truest love can endure much and forgive 
all. It never wearies, it never despairs. It 
knows that in the end love will bring truth. 
With all its bitter longing, it can wait and suffer, 
and it never fails. 

The truest love is not merely the satisfaction 
of one aspect of human nature : it answers the 
whole life. It is the greatest of all joy-bringers 
and the most wonderful of educators. It can 
hold one to truth with a power that belongs to 
no other force. It is ever fresh and new like the 
morning and the flowers, for it is born anew in 
each experience, and the wonder it reveals to- 
day is a deep below deep in comparison to what 
seemed the infinite joy of yesterday. 



21S 



ROSSETTrS BEAT A BEATRIX 

[London, August 24, 1898] 

ROSSETTI'S Beata Beatrix impresses me 
even more powerfully than four years ago. 
The painter has succeeded in portraying the 
woman capable of the transfigured passion 
which unites the exaltation of the Vita Nuova 
with the warm and palpitating humanity of 
Browning's women. Perhaps even Dante fails of 
something this picture contains, something so 
peculiarly modern that the mediaeval world 
could scarcely perceive it. To give this Beat- 
rice, with the older exaltation of love which 
reaches its highest point in Dante must be 
united a passionate humanity depending upon 
the deepening of the personal relations in mod- 
ern life. Rossetti was peculiarly fitted to use 
and interpret the spiritual symbolism of Dante. 
The flaming figure of Love — the subdued red 
haloed with golden light, the warm red dove 
with the gray-olive poppies of sleep, the dial at 
the hour of Beatrice's death, the dark figure of 
Dante in the nearer background, the subdued 
golden sunset over the Arno — all are pulsating 
with the spirit of the Vita Nuova. 

The figure of Beatrice is expressive of the 
highest point of this symbolism. The dark 
auburn hair, which Rossetti loved to paint, is so 
delicate and soft that it lies in a warm mass 
whose contour fades into golden light. The 

216 



ROSSETTrS BEAT A BEATRIX 

outer drapery is fresh green in color, the inner 
robe a subdued bluish gray. The face singularly 
mingles spiritual life and physical death. The 
color is gray and yet warm. The nose more 
sensitive than the Greek, the still nostrils seem- 
ing on the point of vibrating with the passion of 
the soul. The mouth is at rest, yet not closed, 
the deeply-curved lip, such as only a woman cap- 
able of the heart-warm human love possesses, 
seems almost palpitating with life. The hands 
are full of peace, yet sweet and with such power 
to express the awakened hunger of love. The 
long throat, the posture expressing at once the 
peace of death and of transfigured Hfe — the 
whole forms a masterpiece expressing an ideal 
elsewhere unattained in painting. 



217 



EXPERIENCE 

HOW difficult it is to live with people — even 
the best people. Small idiosyncrasies 
come painfully to the surface, differing opinions 
jar, slight elements of personality involve con- 
stant strain. It is well not to come too close to 
one's friends — for the sake of the friendship. 
Morcver, it is always a mistake to plan a single 
detail of another's life : the more entirely one 
avoids this the safer is the relationship. 



^i8 



MORAL JUDGMENT 



[Paris, December 28, 1898] 

^^OME types of character are very difficult to 
k3 analyze, and their whole place and mean- 
ing in Hfe is hard to see. It is not easy to give 
up the expectation of finding each human being 
ideal, but the hard lessons of experience compel 
us to see how mingled of good and evil life is. 
We must take people for what they are worth 
and forgive their failure. At the same time we 
must never relax in our own struggle toward 
the highest. To look ever toward the noblest 
ideal for oneself, yet to forgive the failure to 
live up to it in every other — this is indispensable 
to right living. 



219 



EVOLUTION 



[Bremen, January 12, 1895] 

IT WAS unfortunate that in the middle ages 
philosophy was ''the handmaid of theology." 
It is unfortunate that to-day philosophy is so 
largely the handmaid of the doctrine of evolu- 
tion. The theory of physical evolution is prob- 
ably the most valuable intellectual contribution 
of modern times, but it by no means explains 
the universe. Some centuries hence it will 
probably seem as far from a complete philos- 
ophy as the Copernican theory seems to us to- 
day. The enunciation of the theory of evolution 
has not changed the facts of the higher human 
life nor destroyed the significance of the cen- 
turies of thinking over spiritual questions. 

If we stand close enough to our back-yard 
fence it will shut off the view of the distant 
mountains and become the limit of our horizon. 
Very few men ever get far away from their 
back-yard fence, and some even bow down be- 
fore it and say, " See, we have discovered the 
limit of the universe ; come close that you may 
know the truth." Let us beware that we do not 
build out of our theory of evolution a fence 
across the mystery of the universe, as has been 
done with so many doctrines. 

Meanwhile the stars roll on in the perfect 
harmony of their endless flight ; men and wo- 
men love and hope and suffer; children laugh 

220 



EVOLUTION 



and play over the green earth, and life remains 
the infinite mystery it has been through all 
time. 



321 



NATURE 

[Lucerne, November 15, 1898] 

THERE is a power and freedom in a great 
aspect of nature that does not belong to a 
masterpiece of painting or perhaps of any other 
art. As each expression of the human spirit has 
its own positive significance unequalled by any 
other, so each of the various moods of Nature 
has its own unapproachable grandeur, beauty or 
mystery. The ministry of Nature to man's spirit 
is beyond all that we have yet consciously under- 
stood ; and in so placing ourselves that the 
fulfillment of that ministry is possible lies one of 
the subtle secrets of exalted and harmonious 
living. 



222 



IMMORAL KINDNESS 



[Berlin, December 3, 1894] 

ONE of the most vicious phases of conduct 
is to be generous at the expense of truth, 
that is, to pretend to kindly feelings which are 
quite undeserved by the recipient and equally 
unfelt by the giver. To make everything 
smooth and pleasant for those who merit a firm 
rebuke is conduct which may call itself virtue, 
but is often a result of moral laziness, some 
temperaments choosing it as the most comfort- 
able course. 



223 



TO-DAY 

[Berlin, November 12, 1894] 

WE ARE inclined always to postpone life 
and to underrate the value of the present 
moment in its opportunities and its happiness. 
The time somewhat removed is seen in the soft 
beauty of distant perspective. The bare rocks 
of human reality are part of the exquisite whole 
through the magic of the atmosphere. The toil 
and failure of the past are forgotten, but the 
positive life and joy are remembered because 
they are with us forever. In the present, on the 
other hand, difficulties are exaggerated. The 
slight physical indisposition, the changing men- 
tal moods, the lack of some minor specific aid 
seem insuperable obstacles. We postpone our 
efforts for a more favorable time, and so life 
slips away with its best chances unemployed. 
We should be masters of ourselves, remember- 
ing that there is but one day in all eternity that is 
ours — to-day. 



224 



THE WILL 



[June II, 1900] 

NOT in time or place or conditions, is the 
cause of one's work or idleness, serenity 
or irritation. Cease seeking in conditions 
excuses for failure and emancipate yourself from 
the control of circumstances. 



225 



L 



Life 

[1886] 

IFE is not to be measured by coarse Time, 
But flows, ever fresh and beautiful, 
Forth from the Eternal Heart 
And bears us on its bosom far and high ; 
And moments are as years and years as mo- 
ments ; 
And birth and death and all things grow to be 
A thin cloak which would cover but may not 

hide 
The Eternal Soul. 



226 



NOV 29 1902 



